Unbreakable

Project Unbreakable

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The Art of Witnessing

Question - What is your way of meditation?
Osho - My way of meditation is very simple. There are one hundred and twelve methods of meditation. Out of all of those I have chosen the most simple -- the most easily done. I call it witnessing. The moment you witness something you become separate from it, you are the witness, the thing becomes an object -- the witnessed.

If you are walking on the road, and you are also witnessing that you are walking -- not going along just like a robot, mechanical, everyday habit, the road is known, the legs know it, you can even walk with closed eyes. But walking with absolute alertness every step, every fall of a leaf, every ray of the sun, every bird flying in front of you, fully alert... slowly, slowly, you become aware that you are not the body that is walking, you are something inside which is witnessing.

Once you have witnessed your body, you have got the knack of the method. Then you start witnessing your thoughts -- sitting silently, just watching the rush of thoughts, not interfering, not saying, "This is good. This is bad." Not justifying, not appreciating, no judgment... non-judgmental witnessing, just like the mirror. Anybody passes by, the mirror reflects it; that's all, it makes no comment.

Strangely enough, when you stop making comments on the thoughts, they begin to stop; your comments keep them alive. Once you are simply a mirrorlike witness, thoughts disappear, and you become aware of a deeper layer, of emotions, moods, which are very subtle. You are not even aware many times that you are sad. You are often not aware of what your emotional state is -- it is very deep, there is a thick layer of thoughts.

When thoughts have stopped, then you become aware of a very subtle breeze -- and there is a great joy to see it pass. The method remains the same -- you remain a witness without judgment. First body, second mind, third heart. And the fourth happens on its own. I call my way the fourth way because after the third you cannot do anything.

Once your emotions and moods disappear, suddenly there is a quantum leap -- the witness has nothing to witness anymore. It comes home. It witnesses itself. It becomes both the seer and the seen, the object and the subject, and for the first time you have unity. This experience of absolute organic unity of your consciousness has been called by different names -- moksha, nirvana, liberation, enlightenment, illumination.

Whatever word you choose makes no difference. But this is the ultimate peak, this is the ultimate goal of human life. So my method is very simple. You need not even sit to do it. You can do it anywhere -- walking on the street, sitting in the bus, sitting in the plane, eating, even sleeping. When you are going to sleep you don't fall asleep suddenly, it takes a few minutes; just watch how the sleep comes in.

Slowly, slowly, you will see sleep coming in, and as your witnessing becomes deeper there comes a moment when you can see that the whole night you are asleep yet still alert. I have tried almost all one hundred and twelve methods. That list is exhaustive, there is no possibility of adding a single method more. You can make a method of combinations, but those one hundred and twelve are exhaustive.

Out of them all I have chosen witnessing, because most of them are based on this in different ways. For example, if while making love you also witness, it becomes tantra. Tantra has taken one method, used it for love, and changed the whole sexual energy into a spiritual phenomenon. That's what I have been talking about, and I have been misunderstood by almost everybody. They think I am teaching free sex. I am teaching meditative sex, and they think I am teaching free sex.

I was simply teaching that if you can make sex an object of meditation you can become free of it -- because with meditation the energy starts moving higher and higher. My sannyasins who have been with me are puzzled that they have lost all interest in sex. And the people who have been condemning me -- that is their own imagination, their own creation, the whole idea of free sex.

But it is sensational, particularly in a country which is very repressive about sex. To me, sex is as natural as everything else. If we can make sleeping a meditation, if we can make eating a meditation, why leave sex out? And sex is so powerful that it should not be left out; otherwise, that will that it should not be left out; otherwise, that will create disturbance. It should be absorbed into your total meditative process. It should become an organic unity.

Perhaps the Tantrikas understood this 1000 years ago. They did; they had something substantial. The Tantrikas were not part of a religion but of a very rebellious group of religious people, who created Khajuraho and thousands of other temples around. All other religions are talking almost rubbish about God, about heaven and hell.

Tantrikas were the first scientific religious people who took possession of their energy -- which was already available. They managed to transform it in the same way that later somebody transformed the electricity from the clouds to become a light in your house. Nobody would have conceived before that the electricity flashing in the clouds could run your fans and your air-conditioners and your railways.

Tantrikas had the first insight that man's sexual energy can be transformed easily. The only barrier is repression. If you repress it, then you cannot transform it. Don't repress sexual energy, don't condemn it, but create a friendship with it, that's what I have been saying. Don't think of it as a sin; it is not -- you are born of it. The whole life is sex. If you call sex sin, then the whole life becomes sin, then the whole existence becomes sin -- and this is not a religious approach to the world. We should make the whole world divine -- not sin. But nobody reports what I have been saying; they just go on misinforming people. This is a misfortune -- that journalism still is not literature.

Source: " The Last Testament, Vol 4, Chapter 15 " - Osho

Uncovering The Miraculous You

At the heart of each of us is an amazing and miraculous being. We have a wonderful wholeness, which is powerful, loving, creative and abundantly joyful. This self gets hidden and even buried underneath layers of programming and beliefs that we have inherited and absorbed throughout our life. When we don’t address this programming, we can easily end up feeling like we are living someone else’s life rather than our own. 

But our inner self remains intact and as we can clear away the old programming, conditioning and patterns we can begin to reveal the miraculous being that we really are. 

~ Nick Williams of Inspired Entrepreneur 

Silence thickens

An awesome poem by Julie Daley.

Silence thickens

I can so relate to it.

Random ramblings 3

Today is 21.2.12. I’m beginning to wonder why I tend to ramble on days when the arrangement of dates is rather interesting.

I also came across an interesting concept today.  I am participating in Jean Houston’s ‘Awakening to one’s true purpose’ course and today she introduced to us the concept of the ‘mensch’. Mensch according to Wikipedia means “a person of integrity and honour”. But the way Jean explained it, a mensch is a person, real or imaginary who embodies all the qualities that you admire and wish to have as your own qualities. So first you conceptualise an imaginary mensch or look at a real-life one, and then visualise yourself as being that person with all the qualities that you find admirable.

A few days back I was listening to a talk by Deepak Chopra in which he recounted how while he was a child his mother had told him that he was an embodiment of Lord Krishna. In his words, “luckily for me, I believed her”. He had not been told that he was Lord Krishna himself but that the most admirable qualities of Lord Krishna were nascent within him. His undoubting belief in this allowed these dormant qualities to express themselves, in time.

Believing in the mensch and that you can become it, works on the same principle. Any quality, any attribute, any virtue can be developed this way. By believing that they lie dormant within you and by your intentional calling forth they express themselves and flower. It is as simple as that.

~~~

The Lightest Touch

Good poetry begins with

the lightest touch,

a breeze arriving from nowhere,

a whispered healing arrival,
a word in your ear,
a settling into things,
then like a hand in the dark
it arrests the whole body,
steeling you for revelation.

In the silence that follows
a great line
you can feel Lazarus
deep inside
even the laziest, most deathly afraid
part of you,
lift up his hands and walk toward the light.

-- David Whyte
from Everything is Waiting for You
©2003 Many Rivers Press

Barefoot - The other side of life

I just finished reading a wonderful article about two socially conscious young men who undertook this experience of a lifetime. 

Read article here

Quite courageous of them, I thought.

Why we fear Chikni Chameli

Good post! But would have liked it to be more in-depth. But do agree that most Indians are quite unimaginably hypocritical :(

Read post here

The greatest love of all

My favourite Whitney Houston number, it moves me to tears every time ...

Watch the song here

The greatest love of all

I believe the children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be
Everybody's searching for a hero
People need someone to look up to
I never found anyone to fulfill my needs
A lonely place to be
So I learned to depend on me

[Chorus:]
I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone's shadows
If I fail, if I succeed
At least I live as I believe
No matter what they take from me
They can't take away my dignity
Because the greatest love of all
Is happening to me
I found the greatest love of all
Inside of me
The greatest love of all
Is easy to achieve
Learning to love yourself
It is the greatest love of all

I believe the children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be

[Chorus]

And if by chance, that special place
That you've been dreaming of
Leads you to a lonely place
Find your strength in love 

RIP Whitney.

The Wildest Place

I opened my mailbox this morning and read this most beautiful post and could do nothing but agree wholeheartedly and of course, share :)

The Wildest Place

I guess this is every woman's desire, even without her realising it.

Random ramblings 2

Today is 12.2.12. Nothing special, just a nice arrangement of digits. 

It was 11 days ago that I had announced that I would write a little something about how things are going in my life and all I could come up was 11 days of silence. Yes, I know I shouldn’t say things that I cannot bring to practice but it wasn’t for want of trying. The blank page would look back at me and  talking about my little triumphs and disasters didn’t appeal to me much, and I would abandon my efforts. The events of life, they seem to come and pass quickly, talking about them would involve reliving the experience. And what would be the advantage of that? What has been experienced is gone. this moment holds a new experience. Right now, the experience of writing, the experience of exploring something new, following a new train of thought, going down a new path - all these are in the now, why talk about all the things gone by?

Anyway, before I ramble any more, let me say that right now I’m feeling very directionless, so very listless. I don’t know why. Must be drowsiness from last night late sleeping. On this lazy, languorous afternoon I feel like having a long conversation with someone intimate punctuated by long cozy silences. Just getting lost in the experience of losing myself, of losing my boundaries and floating, flying, scattering and doing it with someone who feels the same and who can share the experience of abandon. Of letting go. Of losing all bonds, even of the body and rising up like air and scattering and dissolving into nothingness.

Somehow, the experience of being alive in a body, with a mind and thoughts and things to do and places to go and outcomes to achieve and all the strings of the act of living seems like a burden. My soul wishes to be free, to leave this body, this world which is holding it back and be free. To melt back into nothingness and everythingness, to be nothing and everything, to be nowhere and everywhere. Yes, the burden of the body seems to be heavy, unbearably heavy. Choosing to experience worldly life seems to be a mistake. To willingly give up all that freedom and to be bound in a limited worldview, bound by time and space in a body that can move only so much feels like being in a prison.

Now it makes sense, the angst, the restlessness I felt all day. Maybe I don’t want to be here but rather be in the hereafter. Maybe my soul hears voices calling and is longing to join them. Maybe that’s why I was thinking about writing my will this morning. Not that it matters who gets my possessions, but just to make it easier for people left behind. Just yesterday I was thinking of a relative’s death and how lucky she was to be freed of her body-mind and to return to her natural state. Maybe that’s what has triggered my soul’s remembrance and its longing to be free. Or maybe it’s the afternoon’s languor, the deep, drowsy silence accentuated by the soft, low buzz of bees. The mind is lulled into half-sleep and in the awareness that opens up, the soul remembers its origins and longs to break free of its worldly chains and return to light and freedom.

But I guess some deeper, unknown reason keeps me here, in this body and mind. In this cauldron of experience, bubbling with desires and thoughts and feelings and pleasure and pain. Maybe now that I’ve glimpsed the vastness of the eternal, I can sit on the rim of the cauldron and watch the bubbling knowing that they are all just bubbles, some lasting longer than the others but all going to burst anyway. Someday, when I know it’s the right moment, I can step away from the cauldron and walk away. Until then, I must continue to be in the cauldron, tasting its juices, but aware that the bubbles are just that and nothing more.

Interesting, how restlessness on languorous summer afternoons can reveal things. I guess, all states of mind are leading us to some new insight, some discovery of truth, if we let them me and be still enough to allow the lesson to reveal itself.

The restlessness is gone, in its place is a peaceful detachment and stillness.

What is your life about?

What is your life about, anyway?
Nothing but a struggle to be someone.
Nothing but a running from your own silence.

~ Rumi

God wants you to know

..that the greatest enemy of individual freedom is the

individual himself.

Saul Alinsky said that, and he was right. In almost every

case, nothing is stopping you, nothing is holding you back

but your own thoughts about yourself and about "how life is." 

Your personal freedom to experience yourself and life

as you wish is not being limited. Step into your choices

and stop telling yourself that you can't, when what you

really mean is that you don't want other people to feel the

way you think that are going to feel when they see you making

the choices you really want to make. Got it?

~ Neale Donald Walsch

65-25 Enchanted Garden

Enchanted garden

Why it is wise to worship a woman

A post I found fascinating ...

Why it is wise to worship a woman

Why to believe in others

In this rare clip from 1972, legendary psychiatrist and Holocaust-survivor Viktor Frankl delivers a powerful message about the human search for meaning — and the most important gift we can give others.

Why to believe in others

Awesome.

Attitude that matters

Exact Narration by an auto-rickshaw passenger,

Suvendu Roy of Titan Industries, who shares his inspirational encounter with a rickshaw driver in Mumbai:

One Sunday, my wife, kid, and I had to travel to Andheri from Bandra. When I waved at a passing auto rickshaw, little did I expect that this ride would be any different...

I looked in front and there was a small TV. The driver had put on the Doordarshan channel.

My wife and I looked at each other with disbelief and amusement. In front of me was a small first-aid box with cotton, dettol and some medicines.

This was enough for me to realize that I was in a special vehicle.

Then I looked round again, and discovered more - there was a radio, fire extinguisher, wall clock, calendar, and pictures and symbols of all faiths

- from Islam and Christianity to Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism.

There were also pictures of the heroes of 26/11- Kamte, Salaskar, Karkare and Unnikrishnan.

I realized that not only my vehicle, but also my driver was special.

I started chatting with him and the initial sense of ridicule and disbelief gradually diminished.

I gathered that he had been driving an auto rickshaw for the past 8-9 years; he had lost his job when his employer's plastic company was shut down.

He had two school-going children, and he drove from 8 in the morning till 10 at night.

No break unless he was unwell. "Sahab, ghar mein baith ke T.V dekh kar kya faida? Do paisa income karega toh future mein kaam aayega."

We realized that we had come across a man who represents Mumbai – the spirit of work, the spirit of travel and the spirit of excelling in life.

I asked him whether he does anything else as I figured that he did not have too much spare time.

He said that he goes to an old age home for women in Andheri once a week or whenever he has some extra income, where he donates tooth brushes, toothpastes, soap, hair oil, and other items of daily use.

He pointed out to a painted message below the meter that read: "25 per cent discount on metered fare for the handicapped.

Free rides for blind passengers up to Rs. 50.

My wife and I were struck with awe. The man was a HERO!

A hero who deserves all our respect!!!

Our journey came to an end;

45 minutes of a lesson in humility, selflessness, and of a hero-worshipping Mumbai, my temporary home.

We disembarked, and all I could do was
to pay him a tip that would hardly cover a
free ride for a blind man.

I hope, one day, you too have a chance to meet Mr Sandeep Bachhe in his auto rickshaw: MH-02-Z-8508.

Be a Reason for Million Smiles….But Never be a reason for even a single Grudge…..

~~~~ from a friend's FB page

Dads

This post was so touching it moved me to tears ...

Dads

Cycles, Seasons, Rhythms, Life

Just read this beautiful blog post by someone I'm following and realised how it is so true for me as well. And I just had to share ... :)

Cycles, Seasons, Rhythms, Life

Random ramblings

Today is 1.2.12 or as the Americans would have it, it’s 2.1.12. Nothing spectacular, just a clever arrangement of digits :)

Last night I was going through a few blogs and was amazed to read the kind of stuff people put out there, personal stories, even intimate ones, trivial events, kid trouble, car trouble, work trouble, spouse trouble ... they let it all hang out. For an intensely private person like me, it was flabbergasting. Maybe, it is hugely cathartic, I thought. These people are venting because nowadays, in real life, no one has the time nor inclination to listen to one another any more, unlike the old days, where people would meet up for a chin-wag and a mutual vent over coffee or a meal and go away full of food and empty of steam. Full and fully vented, Like a defused pressure cooker :)

So I began to wonder about the benefits of online venting. I can rest assured that not many on the world wide web will know my dirty secrets because I have a fan following of about two, two loyal souls who read my blog regularly. Thank you guys! So what’s the danger that some random stranger will read my outpouring and decide to blackmail me? Almost zero, I can safely assume. Anyway, it being the first of the month and all that I thought let me start my pressure venting on such an auspicious day.

After much pondering and probing my deep subconscious, I found, much to my dismay and maybe my fans’ disappointment, there was nothing to vent about. It rained the whole day which the commuters might have found a nuisance, but sitting at home listening to the rain playing its rain song on the roof was for me very pleasant. The phone didn’t ring and neither did the door bell. Which is not to say I had a boring day. On the contrary, I enjoyed my own company immensely like I always do and yes, I do have something to report.

I started to go for Zumba classes today. Zumba, the dancexercise. It was fun. For an hour a group of us women, twisted and turned and hopped about to the tunes of a rhythmic fast paced music, all flailing arms and legs and jerky movements and even some non-movements until we were all perspiring like red-faced pigs (I haven’t seen one, but I imagine it would have looked like us :) The good, old heart got a good workout and I bet adrenaline was surging through my system in leaps and bounds. Coming home and getting under the shower was suddenly such a pleasant experience, I must admit. And now that it’s almost midnight and going to be 2.2.2012 soon, the bed too looks quite unbearably attractive :)

So, that was it, my soul-baring for the day. Shall give it another shot tomorrow and see if any secrets pop out without my knowing it :)

Love art

Art begs you to notice it.

Why? Because art is God's way of saying hello.

So pay attention to poetry. Pay attention

to music. Pay attention to paintings and sculptures and

photo exhibits and ballets and plays.

Don't let all this go unnoticed.

Your world is shouting out to you, revealing

something intrinsically glorious about itself.

Listen carefully. Love art, the way art loves Life.

~ Neale Donald Walsch

F.U.C.G.

(Warning : Please read further only if you have a sense of humour and a high tolerance to irreverence. :P)

In the long distant past (possibly when the Ages were Dark and dismal to boot) in the empire where the sun allegedly never set (but has, luckily for its colonies, since set) it is rumoured that a consent had to be procured from the monarch in order to pursue the activity of making babies. Once said consent had been obtained, a sign had to then be put up on the front door proclaiming ‘F0rnication Under the Consent of the King’ (F.U.C.K.). It is hard to tell why this extreme amount of control by the state was imposed. Maybe the king was a control freak and got his kicks by looking at the ledgers and saying ‘Oh! 350 people want to f0rnicate, let me give consent to 50 and let the others stew in their juices. Ha Ha Ha!’ And then giving himself the royal consent, off he would go to tickle his fourth queen. Or maybe, it was a means to control the population, just in case they multiplied too much and thought about revolting against the revolting conditions they lived in, in which case, a revolting peasant would find the royal neck and give it a not-so-royal slit and the kick-desiring royal would be forced to kick the bucket. Quite smart they were, eh, the ‘mai-baap’ of yore.

Well, actually that got me thinking … what if such a policy could be put to work in India as an anti-proliferation measure. That train of thought got me quite excited, I mean, in the mental sense. And I started to think of its consequences. For starters, even if such a policy was formulated, since we have managed to kick out all our raja-log, both desi and videsi, and now have a apunich chunela sarkar firmly entrenched, it would have to be called ‘F0rnication Under the Consent of the Government’ or F.U.C.G. Ughhh! I must say, just introducing the word ‘government’ just made the hitherto highly pleasure-inciting activity suddenly lose all its desirability and become almost as dull and unexciting as a bureaucratic babu. Imagine you and your significant other lying in bed and saying, ‘let’s get this thingamajig from the government.’ ‘Hmmmm…?’ ‘Ummm, let’s get the latest plasma installed in the bedroom instead’. See, that would straight away put off a lot of people from even thinking of trying to make babies. Part of our pesky proliferation problem solved there itself.

Well, let’s say some people refuse to get sidetracked by trashy TV shows even if they are in HD and 3D and are still wanting to steam up a sweat between the sheets. The next step, then would be to register all the applications from these testosterone-junkies. Out of the total of 1.2 billion (and rising) people, let’s say, there are 20 million eagerly waiting couples, and as luck would have it, you are one of those in whose chart Shani was casting a malevolent eye at the house of kiddos, then your application would be lost in the corridors of babudom for the next 30 years by which time your baby-making hormones would have gone into retirement, packed its bags and left, last heard of holidaying in Hawaii, leaving you, shall we say, cold in the extremities and, errr, hot in the middle. Hmmm … halat kharab, upar se kismet bhi kharaab, magar kya karen, such is life, just belt up and bear it, man. And look at the bright side, you complaining fella. So what if you couldn’t save your lineage from dying out, you have just saved the world from the population bomb. Come here and line up for the Bharat Ratna behind all these other nice senior citizens. And wipe that grimace off your face and smile for the camera please …

But what about all those people who after making trips to various holy places, fasting on Saturdays and feasting the holy men, manage to chum up with Shani and get him to move their applications to the front of the line, you ask? Well, you really are having an anxiety-attack, aren’t you? Let me assure you that you can safely put your worries together with all the other ill-fated applications down there in the dungeons, for the Indian babu will always remain a fly-swatting, file-pushing, long lunch-taking, personal errand-running flag-bearer of absentee incompetence. And no amount of Shani-appeasement is going to change that. But what is beginning to worry me is the thought that they might be able to side-step the babu-road-block if they took the help of the lissome Laxmi and shared some of their bootlegged bounty with the babu. Some of the missus’ ill-gotten diamonds packed into a mithai dabba and pressed upon the drooling babu or a creaking peti full of crinkly crores left at the bureaucratic door and the babu might give them the consent even before you finish saying ‘take off your clothes’.

In which case Darwin will rise from the ashes and kick up a big ruckus because we will have changed his theory to ‘survival of the filthiest richest’ and Amnesty International are not going to be too tickled either with the ensuing demographic disaster of proliferating smugglers, extortionists and liquor kings. But Darwin does not need a F.U.C.G. and neither does AI. In their lands it is consent-free, or rather, it’s a free-for-all, so they should count themselves lucky and go and proliferate in their own countries and not try to be the ‘foreign hand’ who is always trying to halt India’s progress. These firangs, I tell you, always interfering.

I know, I know, it’s not fair to the aam janta, who cannot afford to part with mildewed millions. The milling middle class, who is forever trying to add zeros to their paltry savings, trying hard from being hazarpatis, to become lakhpatis to crorepatis. When have they ever allowed boiled and pasty babus get in the way of accomplishing their ends, let me ask? To them what are babus anyway? Mere law-makers! Cogs in the wheel of the great lumbering, slumbering bureaucracy. Who is going to enforce the law? Not these stuffed shirts, with their starched collars and starchier smiles. Bah! The MCs are street smart. Whenever the hormones hit them below the belt, all they will do is pass a few Gandhijis to the hawaldars, the low on salary but high on self-importance law-enforcers and all will be happy. The babu, happy that he is not disturbed in reducing the number of flies in the over-populated fly kingdom, the hawaldar who can now go and buy that silk sari to keep his wife happy in anticipation of you-know-what, and the MC who can now indulge in the most pleasurable exercise ever known. Such a wonderful invention it is - this happiness-circulation device called corruption. I wonder why Anna Hazare was making such a big fuss over it, even trying to kick the bucket in protest, maybe his hormones were on vacation. Or did a Wall Street on him, you know, took a high-dive into nothingness.

But I hate to think of all that matrimonial ads that will surface. Like - ‘Boy: 10th fail, but with F.U.C.G. degree. Of no known employment other than putting degree to good, far and wide use. Seeks beautiful, fair pativrata girl with light eyes, expert in cooking and house management, willing to bring in at least 100 tolas of gold and 10 crores in cash ’. Or ‘Girl : 5th fail, getting close to 40, has rudimentary cooking skills, and most importantly F.U.C.G. Please reply only if you are a doctor, Air Force pilot or CEO or earning a seven figure salary and willing to employ a cook and housemaid. All other applications will be rejected.’ This is not looking too good, is it? And the fellow who was quite happy printing fake 1000 rupee notes will now be able to move from lakhpati to crorepati in a jiffy just by changing the typeface on his printing machine. This is looking downright depressing.

Ok, ok, ok, I know when I’m beaten. I know this idea of mine has as much chance of surviving as a rain-drop in the Saharan desert doing the belly-dance and surviving. So, I guess I’ll have to give it a fair and fitting funeral right here. But I do and most unabashedly hope that it does NOT RIP. I hope its seething, unfulfilled ghost rises to haunt the Indian psyche until they buy enough ‘What an IDEA Sirji’s and indulge in their orgasmic adventures only in virtual 3D. In which case Abhishek Bachan will get all the credit for having stopped India’s monumental baby production activities.

What the @#$%^, a woman’s brain is grossly under-rated, I tell you ...

~~~