No parents can think of their children to remain unhappy. They want them to be happy — just their thinking is wrong. They think if they become doctors, if they become professors, engineers, scientists — then they will be happy. They don´t know. They can only be happy if they become what they have come to become. They can only become the seed that they are carrying within themselves.

Osho

You always have a choice but you forget that you have it. Do you remember the energy and enthusiasm you had on the first day of your first job? You consciously chose to do the work you had gladly accepted to do. But then you gradually fell asleep to the choice you made, and the day became "I have to" go to work, instead of "I want to" go to work. You forgot to see all the opportunities which come with work - opportunities like learning, nourishing and being nourished by others, developing new relationships, expanding your personal capacity. Instead you decided it was just something that you had to do to 'get the money'. This is why most people are sleep-walking through their lives, and they don't know it. The solution, choose your work every day, put the energy of love into your relationships...every day, even if you don't particularly like your job or the people around you. And you'll be amazed at how your life transforms. When you choose to put love into what you do, the universe will move heaven and hell to let you do what you love.

Riflessi di luce (reflections of light) by Cosimo Antitomaso

A friend is one to whom one may pour out all the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that the gentlest of hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away. 

(Arabian Proverb)

http://youtu.be/gysXBjop--g

After awhile you learn the subtle difference

between holding a hand and chaining a soul.

And you learn that love doesn't mean security,

And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts

And presents aren't promises.

And you begin to accept your defeats

with you head up and your eyes open.

With the grace of maturity, not the grief of a child.

And you learn to build all your roads on

Today because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans,

And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.

After awhile you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much.

So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul,

Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

And you learn that you really can endure...

That you really are strong

And that you really do have worth.

And you learn and learn and learn ....

With every goodbye you learn.

- Veronica A. Shoftstall

Sometimes, you just have to bow your head, say a prayer and weather the storm.

Feel, Don’t Think

You are sitting in the garden, the traffic is passing by and there are many noises and many sounds. You just close your eyes and try to find the subtlest sound there is around you. A crow is cawing: just concentrate yourself on that crow’s noise. The whole traffic noise is going on. The sound is such, it is so subtle, that you cannot be aware of it unless you focus your awareness towards it. But if you focus your awareness, the whole traffic noise will go far away and the noise of the crow will become the center. And you will hear it, all the nuances of it ― very subtle, but you will be able to hear it.

Grow in sensitivity. When you touch, when you hear, when you eat, when you take a bath, allow your senses to be open. And don't think ― feel.

You are standing under the shower: feel the coolness of the water falling on you. Don’t think about it. Don’t immediately say, “It is very cool. It is cold. It is good.” Don’t say anything. Don’t verbalize, because the moment you verbalize, you miss feeling. The moment words come in, the mind has started to function. Don’t verbalize. Feel the coolness and don’t say that it is cool. 

We go on saying things, not even aware of what we are saying. Stop verbalizing; only then can you deepen your feelings. If feelings are deepened, then this technique can work miracles for you.

Feel: my thought

Close your eyes and feel the thought. A continuous flow of thoughts is there, a continuum, a flux; a river of thoughts is flowing. Feel these thoughts, feel their presence. And the more you feel, the more will be revealed to you ― layers upon layers. Not only thoughts that are just on the surface; behind them there are more thoughts, and behind them there are still more thoughts ― layers upon layers. 

And the technique saysFeel: my thought.. And we go on saying, “These are my thoughts.” But feel ― are they really yours? Can you say “my”? The more you feel, the less will it be possible for you to say that they are yours. They are all borrowed, they are all from the outside. They have come to you but they are not yours. No thought is yours ― just dust gathered. Even if you cannot recognize the source from where this thought has come to you, no thought is yours. If you try hard, you can find from where this thought has come to you. 

Only the inner silence is yours. No one has given it to you. You were born with it, and you will die with it. Thoughts have been given to you; you have been conditioned to them. If you are a Hindu, you have a different type, a different set of thoughts; if you are a Mohammedan, of course, a different set of thoughts; if you are a communist, again a different set of thoughts. They have been given to you, or you may have taken them voluntarily, but no thought is yours.

If thoughts are not mine then nothing matters, because this too is a thought ― that you are my wife, or you are my husband. This too is a thought. And if basically thought itself is not mine, then how can the husband be mine? Or how can the wife be mine? Thoughts uprooted, the whole world is uprooted. Then you can live in the world and not live in it. 

Osho, The Book of Secrets

Awareness & Relaxation

Step 1: Daily Watching

“Start being aware with day-to-day, routine actions, and while you are doing your routine actions, remain relaxed.

“There is no need to be tense. When you are washing your floor, what is the need to be tense? Or when you are cooking the food, what is the need to be tense? There is not a single time in life that requires your tension. It is just your unawareness and your impatience.

“I have not found anything — and I have lived in all kind of ways, with all kinds of people. I have always been puzzled: why are they tense? It seems tension has nothing to do with anything outside you, it has something to do within you. Outside you always find an excuse only because it looks so idiotic to be tense without any reason. Just to rationalize, you find some reason outside yourself to explain why you are tense.

“But tension is not outside you, it is in your wrong style of life.

Step 2: Accept yourself

“You are living in competition — that will create tension. You are living in continuous comparison — which will create tension. You are always thinking either of the past or of the future, and missing the present that is the only reality — that will create tension.

“Just find your own talent. Nature never sends any single individual without some unique gift. Just a little search…. Whatever qualities and whatever talents you have, use them to the fullest, and the energy that is involved in tensions will start becoming your grace, your beauty.

Step 3: Be an Artist of Love

“Whatever you are doing, do it with such love, with such care that the smallest thing in the world becomes a piece of art. It will bring great joy to you. And it will create a world without competition, without comparison; it will give dignity to all people. It will restore their pride, which religions have destroyed.

“Any act done with totality becomes your prayer.”

Osho, The Hidden Splendor

You will see what you want to see. So what do you want to see?

You will experience what you expect to experience. So what exactly are your expectations?

Reality is the way it is. Yet the reality of your life depends on the way you filter and interpret and respond to what is.

When you sincerely expect life to be rich, beautiful and fulfilling, you will absolutely find a way to live it as such. When you truly seek to see and experience life at its best, that’s what you’ll end up doing.

No, you can’t magically make things appear just by expecting them to do so. What you can do, however, is open yourself to the great possibilities and realities that most certainly are already here.

Life’s great possibilities are here now for you to fulfill. Expect them, open yourself to them, see them and live them fully.

— Ralph Marston

Man's Inhumanity

 

Why do people treat each other like they do? Is it all conditioning, or is there something in man that makes him willing to go astray?

It is both.

First, there is something in man that leads him astray. And secondly, there are people whose interest it is to lead human beings astray. Both together create a false, fake human being. His heart longs for love, but his conditioned mind prevents him from love.

This is the problem. The child is born with a heart that longs for love, but he is also born with a brain that can be conditioned.

Society has to condition it against the heart, because the heart will be always rebellious against the society, it will always follow its own way.

It cannot be made into a soldier. It can become a poet, it can become a singer, it can become a dancer, but it cannot become a soldier.

It can suffer for its individuality, it can die for its individuality and freedom, but it cannot be enslaved. That is the state of the heart. But the mind.... The child comes with an empty brain, just a mechanism, which you can arrange the way you want. It will learn the language you teach, it will learn the religion you teach, it will learn the morality you teach. It is simply a computer; you just feed it with information. And every society takes care to make the mind stronger and stronger so that if there is any conflict between heart and mind, the mind is going to win. But every victory of the mind over the heart is a misery. It is a victory over your nature, over your being – over you – by others. And they have cultivated your mind to serve their purposes.

So the mind is empty, it is brain; you can put anything in it. And with twenty-five years of education you can make it so strong that you forget your heart; you will always remain miserable. The misery is that your heart can only give you joy, can only give you happiness, can only make you dance.

The mind can do arithmetic, but it cannot sing a song. Those are just not the capacities of the mind. So you are torn apart between your nature, which is your heart, and the society that is in your head. And certainly you are born – everybody is born – with these two centers. That is the difficulty.

And one center is empty. In a better society it will be used in accordance with the heart, to serve the heart. Then it will be a great life, full of rejoicings. But up to now we have lived in an ugly society, with rotten ideas. They have used the mind. And that vulnerability is there – mind can be used.

Now communists are using it in one way; fascists used it in Germany in one way; all the other religions are using it in different ways. But that vulnerability is with every individual: that you have a mind which you bring empty. In fact it is a blessing of existence – but misused, exploited. It is given to you empty so that you can make it perfectly subservient to your heart, to your longings, to your potential. Nothing is wrong in it. But the vested interests all over the world have found it a beautiful opportunity for them – to use the mind against the heart. So you remain miserable and they can exploit you in whatever ways they want.

That’s why the whole world is miserable.

Everybody wants to be loved, everybody wants to love; but the mind is such a barrier that it neither allows you to love, nor does it allow you to be loved. In both cases the mind comes in the way and starts distorting everything.

And even if by chance you meet a person you feel love for and the person feels love for you, your minds are not going to settle. They have been trained by different systems, different religions, different societies.

It is everybody’s birthright to be happy, but unfortunately the society, the people with whom we have been living, who have brought us into the world, have not thought anything about it. They have just been reproducing human beings like animals– even worse because at least animals are not conditioned. This conditioning process should be completely changed. The mind should be trained to be a servant of the heart.

Logic should serve love. And then life can become a festival of lights.

Osho, Beyond Psychology