Sunday, May 26, 2013

Close your eyes

Fall in love.
Stay there...

- Rumi

Love has three stages

First you have to learn to love yourself, because only if you love yourself can you love the other. You have to love yourself so much that love starts overflowing.

Perhaps that is where you are; you need the other. That is the second stage of love.
Loving the other is a difficult job. Loving oneself is simple. Because the other need not fit with you, need not fulfill your expectations; the other may start power trips, ego trips, all kinds of numbers. And you will need love enough not to be dominated, not to be destroyed by the other; otherwise, the other always destroys it.
Jean-Paul Sartre is not absolutely wrong when he says the other is hell.
Alone you can be silent, peaceful. With the other everything becomes difficult, everything becomes a conflict. The very presence of the other makes demands on you. You have to be very compassionate, very kind, not to get caught into an intimate enmity; otherwise the other is going to become a hell to you.You have to be so loving that your love transforms the other, to such an extent that you can say the other is not hell.
You have to be very articulate, very understanding. It is one of the greatest experiments in life. There is no other experiment which is bigger.
You have to love in such a way that slowly, slowly it changes the other person, and the other person starts dropping the effort to dominate, the effort to manipulate. It all depends on your love.
In each case you should remember that you have taken the step.
It is your experiment, and you have to be grateful to the other that he is participating in your experiment.
If you want your experiment to be successful, then you have to go on loving in spite of the other, not bothering about small things.

Only when you can love the other person to such an extent that it becomes a transformation in him or in her does the third stage of love arrive.
Then it is not a question of two persons loving each other; then it is love which engulfs two persons and the two persons become, in a certain deeper sense, one whole.
In India we have the statue of Aradhanishwar, half man, half woman.
That is the third stage of love: when the man and the woman are no more two persons, they have become half and half into one whole. This third stage of love is, automatically, meditation. One who can reach this stage need not do anything else for meditation; this will be his mysticism. This was the whole approach of tantra, to reach to the third stage of love; then no other religion, no other methods are needed. Love itself becomes your god, your ultimate experience.
But the second stage is really difficult; otherwise, for thousands of years people would not have escaped into monasteries. What was the fear? Why were they trying to hide in monasteries?
The second step is really difficult, and because of the difficulty all religions have chosen to escape from life. But escaping from life is not the answer, it is simply cowardice.
Life has to be changed through understanding. And if you love, love has an alchemy of its own.
If love cannot change the other person, it only means you don’t know what love is; you must be misunderstanding something else for love, because love is absolutely capable of changing people. In fact, it is the only way to change.
There is no place where love is being taught.
There is no place where love is being nourished.
That is one of the functions of the mystery school: to make your love pure, pure of ego and power and domination — just a sheer gift of joy, a delight in the being of the other person, just a sharing of all that you have, holding nothing back.

Love is the greatest magic.
Don’t be afraid of the other; let the other enter your life. I don’t teach escapism. I teach you to go into the world, to transform the world, because only in that transformation will you be transformed.
By escaping to the hills and to the monasteries you will miss transformation yourself. You will shrink, you will not expand. And if you cannot love a single person, how are you going to love the whole universe? And that’s what prayer is — loving the whole universe.
People feel that it is easier to love the whole universe, because there seems to be no problem — the universe, the trees, the stars, the moon, the sun… they don’t create any problem.
The other creates trouble because your love is not enough. If your love is overflowing, the other will be showered by it, cleansed by it.

And instead of creating trouble for you, the other can become a tremendous help, a complementary part in the organic unity of your being, and can lead you to the third stage.
It all depends on how much you can love.
And I don’t think that one should be miserly about love. It costs nothing. And it is not a quantity, that you have loved one kilo, so now there is one kilo less. It is not a quantity.
The more you love, the more you have it.
The more you give, the more the universe goes on pouring into you from all sides. There are hidden springs, just as in a well.
Love has an underground way of filling you, invisible.
The only way to know is just give it and see — you are always full.

Osho

Only once in your life

"I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that you’ve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more.
You share hopes for the future, dreams that will never come true, goals that were never achieved and the many disappointments life has thrown at you.
When something wonderful happens, you can’t wait to tell them about it, knowing they will share in your excitement.
They are not embarrassed to cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make a fool of yourself.
Never do they hurt your feelings or make you feel like you are not good enough, but rather they build you up and show you the things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful.
There is never any pressure, jealousy or competition but only a quiet calmness when they are around. You can be yourself and not worry about what they will think of you because they love you for who you are. The things that seem insignificant to most people such as a note, song or walk become invaluable treasures kept safe in your heart to cherish forever.
Memories of your childhood come back and are so clear and vivid it’s like being young again. Colours seem brighter and more brilliant.
Laughter seems part of daily life where before it was infrequent or didn’t exist at all.
A phone call or two during the day helps to get you through a long day’s work and always brings a smile to your face. In their presence, there’s no need for continuous conversation, but you find you’re quite content in just having them nearby.
Things that never interested you before become fascinating because you know they are important to this person who is so special to you.
You think of this person on every occasion and in everything you do. Simple things bring them to mind like a pale blue sky, gentle wind or even a storm cloud on the horizon.
You open your heart knowing that there’s a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible.
You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure that’s so real it scares you.
You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile.
Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your life.”

- Bob Marley

Monday, May 20, 2013

These are the four stages of love

On each stage there will be a disappearance of fear.
If sex happens beautifully the body fear will disappear. The body will not be neurotic.
Ordinarily - I have observed thousands of bodies - they are neurotic. Bodies gone mad. Not fulfilled. Not at home.

If love happens, fear will disappear from the mind. You will have a life of freedom, at ease, at-homeness. No fear will come, no nightmares.

If the prayer, gratitude happens, then fear completely disappears, because with prayer you become one - you start feeling a deep relationship with the whole. From the spirit, fear disappears; the fear of death disappears when you have gratitude - never before it.

And when you meditate even fearlessness disappears. Fear disappears, fearlessness disappears. Nothing remains. Or, only the nothing remains. A vast purity, virginity, innocence.

- Osho

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Let's not wait

We will meet again my friend,

A hundred years from today
Far away from where we lived
... And where we used to play.

We will know each others’ eyes
And wonder where we met
Your laugh will sound familiar
Your heart, I won’t forget.

We will meet, I’m sure of this,
But let’s not wait till then…
Let’s take a walk beneath the stars
And share this world again.

~ Ron Atchison