posted October 18, 2007 02:33 PM         

Joy is to enter into your own self. In the beginning it is difficult arduous. In the beginning you will have to face misery; the path is very mountainous. But the more you enter into it, the greater is the reward.

Understanding is The Key

You have to understand one thing; that enlightenment is not an escape from pain but an understanding of pain, an understanding of your anguish, an understanding of misery--not a cover-up, not a substitute, but a deep insight; " why am I miserable, why is there so much anxiety, why is there so much anguish, what are the causes in me that are creating it?" And to see those causes clearly is to be free from them.

Just an insight into your misery brings a freedom from misery. And what remains is enlightenment. Enlightenment is not something that comes to you. It is when pain and misery and anguish and anxiety have been understood perfectly well and they have evaporated because now they have no cause to exist in you---that state is enlightenment. It will bring you, for the first time, real contentment, real blissfulness, authentic ecstasy. And only then can you compare.

What you needed to call " contentment " before was not contentment. What you used to call " happiness" before was not happiness.

Once enlightenment gives you a taste of the real, you will see that all pleasures, all your happiness, were simply the stuff dreams are made of; they were not real. And what has come now, has come forever.

That is the definition of the real: A contentment that comes and never leaves you again is real contentment. a contentment that comes and goes again is not contentment, it is simply a gap between two miseries. Just as we call gap between two wars " peacetime"----it is not a peaceful time, it is simply preparation for another war. If the war is a positive war, the time between two wars is a negative war, a cold war. It goes on underground, you are getting ready for a hot war.

Anything that comes and goes is a dream. Let that be the definition. Anything that comes and never goes is reality.

Try to understand your misery. Live it, go to the very depth of it, find out the cause, why it is there. Let understanding be your medittion.

And try to understand your contentment also, your happiness also, and you will see their superficiality. Once you know that your happiness is superficial and your anguish is very deep---and it is in your hands---you can change your whole being; not even a small space is left for discontentment.

Your love becomes your very life. And it remains. Time passes, but what you have achieved goes on deepening. More and more flowers, more and more songs are born out of it. Thats what we call " enlightenment " The word is Eastern, but the experience has nothing to do with East or West.

By Osho

posted October 18, 2007 07:06 PM         

Love it!!!! Love Osho!!!!

So very true and you have been reading my mind again, Star. As I stated at FFA I was just talking to Butch about this today and then sign on and read this.