I have started the Osho meditation series with Day One.
Lots of talk… very meditative for me. Participants complained that there was no meditation.
When you meditate, that doesn’t mean there is silence outside. The silence is inside. When you meditate it doesn’t mean you cannot listen to someone talk: it only means you listen and hear it, but not through the busy mind, that compares, argues, tries to understand, criticizes and judges. No, the mind simply allows it to be, allows it in, in a meditative state.
It is like when you are in the shower. The mind doesn’t argue with every drop of water… and you can get wet without the mind interfering.
One of the most important pre-requisite to meditation is to KNOW that you are not the mind. That there is you watching the mind. Or not watching the mind.
The mind can do its work without you watching it: when your awareness is directed at your body, for example, you won’t pay attention to the mind. That doesn’t mean the mind will stop. The running commentary of the mind, like a chatterbox, continues, but it will have no audience.
Don’t worry about it: if you learn to direct your attention, it won’t bother you.
When I feel your mind firing and firing, it indicates to me that you, the you that is not the mind, moved to the mind, because it thinks it belongs to the mind.
The separation from mind is the first step to achieve meditation.
The second step will be the separation from the emotions. But you cannot get to the second step without first being good and fluid in the first step.
I learned this back in 1969. I was 22 years old, I was in my third year of architecture school, and I was considered schizophrenic, but the medication didn’t do anything.
In desperation, the doctors sent me to a last resource…
…the showers. A row of shower heads above head, no partition… you are directed to go from one to the next, it is orchestrated by a precision electronic command post. Each shower had a different spray pattern, and a different water temperature. By the end (about 7-8 shower heads, if I remembers correctly) I was completely NOT my thoughts, NOT my feelings, I was not even my body, I was me… CLEARLY. 1
Next morning they sent me home, and changed my diagnosis.
I can’t readily duplicate the experience at home, but alternating hot and cold showers to snap out of the “collapsed” state of me, body, thoughts, and emotions…
Quite a meditative experience, given the separation that happens as a result of the shock.
Try it. Be blaze about it. If you protest, when you protest, you are not separate, so try to observe the protestations of the mind and the body…
Osho has created “active meditations” where he is attempting to create an environment in which this separation happens. Dancing with abrupt and LONG motionlessness…
I prefer just stepping back…
Stepping back is a technical term I invented about a year or two ago, where the YOU (the Observer and Conductor or the “orchestra”) steps back and leaves the hubbub of the “orchestra” and observes.
The attention, the awareness is an arrow starting at you, ending at that which you directed it at. So the attention always moves with the “you” when you step back.
I like it because it is spatial… because, both for the visual and a kinesthetic person it is very obvious. For an abstract thinker: I don’t know if I can help you. You need to call on your visual or kinesthetic modes to grok it.
In today’s webinar we’ll work with the you that is most related to Spirit. We’ll strengthen that aspect of you. For most of you it’s been dead or numb for a long time: it is time to revive it and give it back its role: conductor.
Once you do so, life will become simpler. Not easier, but simpler. Quieter. More wholesome. Will make more sense. Less jerking, less turns, less abrupt stops and starts.
I’ll record the webinar, if it turns out to be good, or repeat it if it is not so good… this is the first time I am doing this topic, so chances are it will be really crappy… if that happens, everyone who paid for it will get the second try free… it is only fair… lol.
No one teaches how to do this, so I am definitely on an unbeaten path…
PS: I don’t know but this may be the secret in the effectiveness of the wim hof system… you cannot stay in your mind… you are jolted out of there…
- Hydrotherapy (hydropathy)
By the beginning of the 20th century hydrotherapy had become a popular treatment. The most common forms were continuous baths, packs, showers, needle sprays, sitz baths and Scotch douches (alternating jets of hot and cold water). Each was held to have particular advantages in different types of cases.
Continuous bath: fresh water at approximate body temperature was constantly poured into the bath, while the old water drained away. This had a calming effect and was used for patients with insomnia, or those who were agitated or suicidal.
The patient was placed in a canvas hammock arranged on a metal frame in the bath, which was then covered with a canvas sheet which had a hole in it for the patient’s head. The patient was immersed up to the chin with his head resting on a rubber pillow.
Continuous baths could last for several hours or even days. Prolonged exposure to warm water kept the skin in good condition and prevented abrasions and the development of bed sores.
Cold water at a temperature of 48-70oF was used to treat patients with manic-depressive psychoses.
Another hydrotherapy
Packs of sheets dipped in varying temperatures of water were wrapped around the patient from head to foot, who remained in this condition for several hours. The technique allowed excited patients to get some rest.
Dry sheets or blankets were used when wet packs were unadviseable.
Showers and needle sprays (multiple horizontal small sprays of water applied to the standing patient) used either warm or cold water, or both alternately (Scotch douches).
