posted September 06, 2005 01:02 AM         

If you want to stop smoking, dont stop right now - because that will not help and you will start again. But whenever you have an urge to smoke, first breathe deeply for five minutes. Start by exhaling. Exhale deeply. Inhale deeply and exhale deeply, but keep the emphasis more on the exhalation than on the inhalation. Squeeze your whole system so that all the air is out. Do this for five minutes before each cigarette....

And if after that five minutes your desire to smoke has disappeared, there is no need to smoke. If the desire remains, you can smoke.

Generally, say 75 times out of 100, the desire will disappear. That urge to smoke always come when you are not enjoying life. If you are enjoying something you can forget about cigarettes. If you are watching a movie and you are really into it, you will not smoke. If you are listening to music and you are really into it, you will not smoke. Whenever you are involved in something and are happy, you will not smoke. You will smoke only when you are not feeling in tune, so you want something to do. Good breathing will give you such a good feeling that you will not feel like smoking. You will feel so happy and so full of vitality, you will not feel like smoking.

In fact breathing does just the opposite to smoking because through breathing you take in more oxygen. Your system functions on a higher plane, at a higher altitude, with more oxygen and you feel more vital. Your blood circulates better and is purified better. Your whole system functions at the maximum level. With smoking you go on dumping carbon dioxide into you system and your system functions at minimum level. Smoking is just the opposite of good breathing.

Breathing

The breath is one of the most important things there is. If you are not breathing fully, you cannot live fully....Then you will be withholding something in all that you do, almost everywhere, even in love. Even when you are talking, you will not communicate completely; something will always remain incomplete.

Everbody breathes wrongly because our whole society is based on very wrong conditions, notions, attitudes. For example, a small child is weeping and the mother tells him not to cry. What will the child do? He will start holding his breath because that is the only way to stop crying. If you hold your breath everything stops - crying, tears, everything. Then by and by that becomes fixed - dont be angry, dont cry, dont do this dont do that. The child learns that if he breathes shallowly, he remains in control. If he breathes perfectly and totally, the way every child is born breathing, then he becomes wild. So he cripples himself.

The breathing passage has a certain musculature around it and if you have been breathing wrongly - and almost everybody has - then this musculature will have become fixed. It is as if a man has not moved for years - his legs have gone dead, his muscles have shrunk, his blood flows no more - and suddenly he decides to go for a long walk. It's a beautiful day. But he cannot move. A great deal of effort will be needed to bring those dead legs back to life. It is the same with breathing. Through deep massage, particularly through Rolfing, the muscles can relax and then you can start again. But once you do start breathing well, dont fall into your old habits again.

Breathing is life. And every change that is going to happen is going to happen through the change in your breathing. Once breathing is perfect, everything else falls into line.

posted September 06, 2005 02:46 AM         

Thanks 26, you find the best info!

posted September 06, 2005 05:17 AM         

quote:

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Change yourself and food will change, clothes will change, sex will change. But change should come from the innermost core, it should not come from the periphery. And all turmoil is on the periphery; deep down there is no turmoil.
You are just like the sea -- go and watch the sea.
All the turmoil, all the waves clashing, is just on the surface; deep, the deeper you go, there is more and more calm. At the deepest part in the sea there is no turmoil, not a single wave.

First go deeper into your sea so you achieve a calm crystallization, so you achieve the point where no disturbance ever reaches.
Stand there.
From there every change comes, every transformation comes.
Once you are there you have become a master; Now whatsoever is unnecessary can be dropped, and can be dropped without any struggle and fight.
Whenever you drop something by fight, it is never dropped.

You can drop smoking by fighting, and then you will start doing something else which will become a substitute. You may start chewing gum, it is the same; You may start chewing pan, it is the same, there is no difference.
You need something to do with your mouth -- smoking, chewing, anything. When your mouth goes on working, you feel at ease because through the mouth tensions are released.
So whenever a man feels tense he starts smoking. Why is it that through smoking or chewing gum or tobacco tensions are released?
Just look at a small child. Whenever he feels tense he will put his hand in his mouth, he will start chewing his own hand.
This is his substitute for smoking.
And why does he feel good when his thumb is in his mouth? Why does the child feel good and go to sleep? This is the way of almost all children. Whenever they feel sleep is not coming they will put the thumb inside the mouth, feel at ease, and fall asleep. Why?
The thumb becomes a substitute for the mother's breast, and food is relaxing.
You cannot go to sleep on a hungry stomach, it is difficult to get sleep. When the stomach is full you feel sleepy, the body needs rest.
So whenever the child takes the breast in his mouth, food is flowing, warmth, love. He is relaxed, he need not worry; tensions are relaxed. The thumb is just a substitute for the breast; it is not giving milk, it is a false thing, but still it gives the feeling.
When this child grows, if he takes his thumb in public you will think he is foolish, so he takes a cigarette. A cigarette is not foolish, it is accepted. It is just the thumb, and more harmful than the thumb. It is better if you smoke your thumb, go on smoking to your grave; it is not harmful, it is better. No harm is done but then people think you are childish, juvenile, then people think what you are doing is stupid. But there is a need so it has to be substituted.
And in countries where breast-feeding has stopped, more smoking will automatically be there. That's why the West smokes more than the East -- because no mother is ready to give her breast to the child because the shape is lost.
So in the West smoking is increasing more and more; even small children are smoking.
I have heard that one mother said to her child, "I don't want neighbors to tell me that you have started smoking. Be truthful and whenever you start smoking, tell me." The child said, "Don't bother Mom, I have already stopped. It is one year now, that I have stopped smoking.
It is one year now so don't you bother, don't you get worried about it." Small children smoking, and the mother is not aware that it is because the breast has been taken away. In all primitive communities a seven-year-old child, or even an eight or nine-year-old child, will continue breast-feeding.
Then there is a satisfaction and smoking will not be so necessary. That's why in primitive communities men are not so much interested in women's breasts; there is no problem that somebody will attack them. Nobody looks at the breasts.
If you had been given the breast for ten years continuously, you would get fed up and bored, you would say, "Stop now!" But every child has been taken away from the breast prematurely, and that remains a wound. So all civilized countries are obsessed with breasts. Even an old man, dying, is obsessed with breasts, goes on searching for breasts.
This seems mad, and it is, but the basic cause is there -- children should be given the breast otherwise they will become addicted to it, the whole life they will be in search of it. You cannot stop smoking directly because it has many related things, implications.
You are tense, and if you stop smoking you will start something else and the other may be more harmful. Don't go on escaping problems, face them.
The problem is that you are tense, so the goal should be how to be non-tense, not, smoking or not smoking.
Meditate.
Relax your tensions without any object into the sky, allow catharsis to happen. When you are non-tense these things will become absurd, foolish, and they will drop. Food will change, your styles of living will change.
But my insistence is on you.
Character is secondary, behavior is secondary, the essential you is the primary thing. Don't pay too much attention to what you do, pay much attention to what you are; being should become the focus, and doing should be left to itself.
When being changes, doing follows. Anything more?

OshO

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posted September 06, 2005 05:23 AM         

Just by stopping the smoking, your nervousness is not going to change. You will feel nervous, you will feel anxious; the anxiety will come. Then you will do something else. And you can find something which is a beautiful substitute; it looks so different. You can do anything. You can just use a mantra instead of smoking, and whenever you feel nervous you can say "Ram Ram Ram":-- anything continuously.
--------------

The problem has not changed; only you have changed the trick. Previously you were doing it with smoke; now you are doing it with a word.
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You can do anything on the surface, but unless deeper roots are changed, nothing happens. So with the outer remember this: be aware of it, and move from the surface towards the roots and find the root -- why are you nervous?

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Once you come to know the roots, once the roots are exposed.... Remember this law: the roots can exist only in darkness -- not only the roots of trees, but the roots of anything. They can exist only in darkness. Once they are brought to light, they die.

posted September 06, 2005 05:28 AM         

quote:

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Ultimately, you have to drop the meditation too. When you get cured, you don't keep taking medicines. After a point, meditation becomes a source of joy, that's all.

People gauge you by external appearances. If you profess to being a meditator, people will be shocked if you drink or smoke. Meditation has nothing to do with all this. If I am smoking a cigarette, I might be doing so meditatively! Nothing was taboo according to Osho. He said: ''Use everything to become meditative. If you are even blinking your eyelashes or lifting your hand, be aware of it.

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posted September 06, 2005 06:35 AM         

Osho was the wise guy who made me realize that we can BE!
Since then so much has changed, but some things haven't, and I'm not worried about that because like he said, "Whenever you drop something by fight, it is never dropped. " So I try not to resist anything, nor worry about anything...No fighting for me!
And it's true because years ago I used to tell myself smoking is bad, and I must quit, but that used to make me want them more! it's illogically logical!

Thanks for those sites, I too feel like an OSHO kick....This Divine Man is a Miracle!

posted September 07, 2005 11:32 PM         

Yes, a Divine Man indeed!

posted September 08, 2005 01:50 AM         

I just wanted to say that because I am silly.

I read a lot of that. I like Osho. I like 26 Taurus. I like Sunchild.
A whole lot of like going on in this thread.

At work We installed a new computer system for the cash, and it was installed during the last Mercury Retrograde... I close my mouth firmly whenever it screws up in silly ways ( even though it is top of the line)
Tonight my cash drawer wouldn't open. They told me to leave a note for the morning people ( To which I replied if I should leave a note just telling them about my week and possibly a grocery list, but then relented and stopped being sarcastic and silly.. well, they weren't specific about what I should say in the note.. just to leave a note!)
So I said;
"The cash drawer won't open. Everything else in the system is fine. We tried several psychological assessments, and I think we forgot its Anniversary, and it is paying us back passively. (Just a theory.)"

posted September 08, 2005 04:57 AM         

And damn. Just reading about the malfunctioning MercRx cash drawer problem makes me want a cigarette.
Well, I'm sure the morning people will get kick out of the note and laughing is a great way to start the day.
Now I am about to end my day (erm, night.) laughing about this:

quote:

---

I like Osho. I like 26 Taurus. I like Sunchild.

---

ROFL

posted September 08, 2005 07:03 PM         

And guess what 26 I can join cramp club!

When auntie flow visits I get really absent minded and have lots of accidents for some reason, do you girls get that too?

Because 2 nights ago I was filling the sink to defrost a frozen thing for my partner, and I walked away for a while only to get distracted and came back and my whole kitchen was like a childs wading pool!!!
I did a great job using 50 towels to cover up the evidence, he didn't know..hehehehe.
He was busy asembling a new bookcase....thank God!

posted September 19, 2005 10:02 PM         

Some days I smoke three cigs, some days ten, and some days not at all. I don't smoke the moment I get into my car or the moment I'm done eating. I would think it should be easier to quit...

(Right now I'm not smoking because I refused to buy a new pack when the old one was gone. I do this after every pack... until I break down.)

For now I try to focus on all the cigarettes I'm not smoking instead of the ones I am.

posted September 22, 2005 01:59 AM         

Hi Pixie!

I like you guys, er, girls.

Havent been around much lately,
so disoriented by this quadruple Neptune transit ,
and, besides, kind of ashamed of some rude comments I've made to other knowflakes.

It occurs to me that I really dont know myself at all. I talk a lot about high ideals, but I'm probably the most selfish, self-centered, apathetic person I know.

I just want to be grounded. Its the queaziest feeling in the world, when you realize that you're even more out of touch, self-deluded, and idiosyncratic than most people.

"Oh well, whatever, nevermind."

posted September 22, 2005 06:08 PM         

Hi Sun,
Yes, I get very absent minded at that time, too. Or shall I say, more absent minded?

Add to that a heavy (and looong) Neptune transit and it's no wonder why I can never remember where I put anything, especially my pack of butts. I know how it is HSC.

Hi future! Good to see you. Wow, only three cigs a day sometimes?! That's great! I'd completely nic out. Maybe I'll try to do what you do to cut back...

Gotta quit, gotta quit.....*breathes deeply*

posted September 22, 2005 08:07 PM         

I wish I could smoke three a day, I'd never quit, why bother?
Unfortunately the nicotine biatch grabs me by the veins like Freddy Kreuger did in one of those dream warrior Nightmare on Elm Street movies. She steers me outside when it is freezing, or raining, or anything. Just to inhale her sweet ( sick ) scent deeply.
Whatta' biatch. I love her.

posted September 23, 2005 12:40 AM         

My Virgo cannot stand to watch me cook, or pour drinks, I make a right mess, only because I'm not focused on the task, rather i'm thinking about life, the universe and everything!*sigh, he just doesn't get it!

posted September 26, 2005 08:29 PM         

Notice all the fixed signs in this thread?