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ED ARRONS

The desire to be without ego is ego caught in illusion.
Only the sick ego desires extinction. The healthy ego
(really the soul) is free of illusion.

Let he who be without truth cast the first ego. :-)

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QUOTING OSHO

All meditations are subtle ways to make you drunk -- to
make you drunkards of the divine.

The first thing to be done is laughter, because that sets
the trend for the whole day. If you wake up laughing, you
will soon begin to feel how absurd life is. Nothing is
serious: even your disappointments are laughable, even you<
are laughable.

Every morning upon waking, before opening your eyes,
stretch like a cat. Stretch every fibre of your body. After
three or four minutes, with eyes still closed, begin to
laugh. For five minutes just laugh. At first you will be
doing it, but soon the sound of your attempt will cause
genuine laughter. Lose yourself in laughter. It may take
several days before it really happens, for we are so
unaccustomed to the phenomenon. But before long it will be
spontaneous and will change the whole nature of your day.

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OSHO'S MYSTIC ROSE MEDITATION: SARLO AND MELODY

MELODY: I'm wanting to do Osho's Mystic Rose Meditation and
I'd like to first talk to someone who has done this.....or
something similar....

SARLO: The basic format of Mystic Rose is laughter for
seven days, three hours a day, followed by crying for seven
days, three hours a day, followed by silent witnessing for
seven days three hours a day. This is the full process.
There are many ways to do abbreviated versions, for
instance a one-hour total with 20 minutes of each stage,
but the full deal obviously goes the deepest.

I have done the full process twice. It is pretty amazing,
very transforming. Because it only takes three hours a day
it can be fitted into one's ordinary life. You might have
to give up a little of your TV but you can still go to work
if you plan it properly.

MELODY: What I'm wondering is....should this be done three
hours contininuously.....or could it be done in 3 one hour
sessions?

SARLO: As it is practised in Pune and in places around the
world, it is three hours continuously. This is not to say
it could not be broken up, but again you lose the full
impact. You will still get something out of it, but less. I
enjoy the one-hour version of three segments and feel very
refreshed but the full 21x3 is so much more.

MELODY: I'm trying to imagine laughing OR crying for 3
hours solid....and wondering if one might need a
facilitator to keep someone 'moving' and to deepen focus?

SARLO: A very good question. My answer is yes. In fact
"facilitator" is a very good word for this. The whole thing
is best done with a group of people, as the energy for
sustaining laughing and crying for three hours is not easy
to manifest alone. In the laughing stage, even if you are
laughing by yourself without overtly interacting, the group
energy makes it much easier. Silly for those of us who have
realized, but there you go. And the interacting can also be
very useful. For this stage a facilitator is virtually not
needed, except to bang the gong at the end.

Laughter, although almost universally endorsed as a
"positive" thing, is nonetheless subtly repressed in most
societies. Still, it feels good, and it's "good *for* you,"
so most people can get into it quite easily, even if it
feels a bit mad to be laughing at nothing at all. Good in
itself, it also has a secondary purpose in the context of
Mystic Rose. It gets your own energy flowing to make way
for the second part.

Crying, especially for no reason at all, is usually more
difficult. And to sustain it for three hours -- well,
everyone will have long slack periods, but here's where the
facilitator can really help. There's very little
interacting in this stage, except with a facilitator as
needed, particularly since a tendency to comfort can be
counterproductive to the goal of experiencing and moving
through your pain, but the group dynamic can still work.

Music is very big in this stage. No marching bands, no
tacky schlocky country music, no rock or jazz or pop,
mostly slow-moving minor-key music, with or without words,
often in foreign languages. One of the tools of the
facilitator is a big collection of music selected for its
tear-jerking qualities, without being maudlin. Obviously
not everyone will respond the same way to any particular
piece of music but the facilitators -- they will have all
taken a training in Pune -- will have developed a feel for
the way things move and how different people respond, etc.

The third stage is not three hours of straight sitting,
ususally 45 minutes of sitting followed by 15 minutes of
soft dancing, with pee break if needed, 45 and 15 etc.
Again facilitators are not needed much here except as
timekeepers.

And from a subsequent post:

MELODY: Mystic Rose Meditation seems tailor made for me
.....the trick seems to be, now that I am considering it so
closely, is to find a group of people to do it with me. It
seems that 'group energy' would be quite conducive for this
sort of thing.

SARLO: It is almost unbelievable but this is "tailor-made"
for almost everybody. Osho has said that he would like all
of his people to do it at least once. It is simply amazing
that something so simple can be so powerful. The crying can
be understood as a surrogate for just about all our
"negative" emotions -- and you can cry for joy as well --
because the other negos are mostly surrogates for pain in
any case. Anger for instance is a reponse to, and arises
out of, a feeling of being injured. So just experience the
pain (injury) directly and be finished with it. Or that's
the idea anyway.

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MANCHINE QUOTES CASTANEDA

From Wheel of Time - (Carlos Casteneda)

Journey to Ixtlan

For the everyday person, the world is strange because, if
he is not bored with it, he's angry with it. For a
"warrior", the world is strange because it is stupendous,
incredible, mysterious and unfathomable. A "warrior" must
assume the responsibility to be here, in this marvellous
world, in this marvellous time.

Ones acts have power, especially when the "warrior" who is
"doing", knows that his acts are his last battle. There's a
strange ardent happiness in acting in full knowledge that
that which one is doing could well be his last act on this
Earth.

The Eagle's Gift

A warrior knows what he is waiting for, and also what
awaits him; while he waits, he feasts his eyes in the
contemplation of the world. The definitive achievment of a
"warrior" is to enjoy in the delight of all infinty.

The destiny of a "warrior" follows an inalterable path. The
challenge consists in how far one can go and how impecable
one can be within destiny's narrow confines.

When the "warrior" lets go of every type of expectation,
actions of others no longer affect him. A strange peace
converts into the force that guides his life. He has
adopted one of the concepts of life of a "warrior".

To all living things, He has given the power, if as such
each desires, to find the opening to freedom and pass
through it. It is obvious for those who see this opening,
and for the creatures that pass through it, that the
"Eagle" has given this gift as an end to perpetuate
consciousness.

A summary:

Ones acts have power, to find the opening to freedom. Any
one of these acts may be your last.

And that's all there is folks!

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_______________________________________________________________

TIM GERCHMEZ

On this memorial day weekend, let us treat it a little
differently than the rest of the country...

Let us realize what a very small part memory really plays
in our lives.

Memory is an important function to technically survive in
the world, but when we bring up memories (good or bad) to
reflect on, we miss out on the unspeakable glory of this
current moment, this Now.

Sometimes memories just arise... memories of good times
shared with friends, memories of childhood. Let us not push
these memories away, but neither let us dwell upon them.

To live in memory is to be spiritually dead. As people get
older, they tend to pay less and less attention to now, as
the attraction seems to fade. People retire, they lose
friends and relatives to death, and the anticipation of
their own death draws near. It seems attractive to more and
more dwell in the land of memory, recalling adventures of
youth, to escape what is perceived as dwindling meaning and
purpose (and increasing fear) in the Here-Now.

Yet, to do so is to hasten death, to encourage it. Now is
the only time, Here is the only place. Let us be supremely
focused, Here and Now. Let us find the real reason to go
on, Now.

Now is always available. It never fails us. Even those with
Alzheimers or who are senile can access Now. Now is open to
all; memory is temporary, unreliable and in the end cheats
us.

Let the memories of the past go. They are nothing but
chains tethering us to things dead and gone, to the unreal.
There is incredibly glory in the Now, if only we would
remain Here, Now, to discover it.

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A NET of JEWELS daily meditations for seekers of Truth
RAMESH S. BALSEKAR <http://www.advaita.org/>

The only thing you know as a matter of certainty is the
fact I AM. But you do not know who this "I" is. One must
first find out precisely who or what it is that is seeking
truth and happiness before there is any possibility of
knowing the transcendental Reality.

********************************************************************

Just as the difference between the space in a pot and the
space outside it disappears when the pot is demolished, so
also does duality disappear when it is realized that the
difference between the individual consciousness and the
Universal Consciousness does not in fact exist.

__________________________________________________________________

MICHAEL J.:

I....Exist I....Exist I....Exist I....Exist I....Exist
I....Exist I....Exist I....Exist I....Exist . . . as me....
I...Exist...as...me.

ANDREW:

Who exists? I am existence.

MICHAEL J.:

Who is I am?

Who is Andrew?

Who cares? :)

ANDREW:

I forget. It's on the tip of my tongue...no, I just can't
quite...maybe it's written down somewhere. hmmm

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