Osho - Weekly Meditation For The Here And Now
Weekly Meditation - Week 34. Feet
August 19
Feet
Feel more and more in your feet.
Sometimes just stand on the earth without shoes and feel its coolness, its softness, its warmth. Whatever the earth is ready to give in that moment, just feel it and let it flow through you. And allow your energy to flow into the earth. Be connected with the earth.
At most people breathe down to the navel but not beyond that, so half the body is almost paralyzed, and because of it, half of life is also paralyzed. Then many things become impossible... because the lower part of the body functions like roots. The legs are the roots, and they connect you with the earth. So people are hanging like ghosts, unconnected with the earth. One has to move back to the feet.
Lao Tzu used to say to his' disciples, "Unless you start breathing from the soles of your feet, you are not my disciples." Breathing from the soles of your feet - and he is perfectly right. The deeper you go, the deeper goes your breath. It is almost true that the boundary of your being is the boundary of your breath. When the boundary increases and touches your feet, your breath almost reaches to the feet-not in a physiological sense, but in a psychological sense - then you have claimed your whole body. For the first time you are whole, of one piece, together.
August 20
Old Mind
If you listen to your likings, you are listening to your old mind.
One has to do some things against one's likings, and then one grows. Growth is not as smooth as people think. It is painful... and the greatest pain comes when you have to go against your likes and dislikes.
But who is this that goes on saying, "This I like and this I don't like"? This is your old mind, not you. If it is allowed, there is no way to change. The mind will tell you to stay in the old rut, because it likes that. So one has to come out of it. Sometimes one has to be against likings and dislikings.
Whenever one changes an old style, it is painful, it hurts. It is like learning a new skill. You know the old very well, so everything goes easily. When you learn a new skill, it is difficult. And it is not only learning a new skill, it is learning a new being. It is going to be hard. The old has to die for the new to be born. The old has to go for the new to come. If you go on clinging to the old, there is no space for the new to come in.
August 21
Ideals
Whenever people are taught great ideals, they start feeling dirty and guilty. Because those ideals are foolish and impossible; nobody can fulfill them.
With ideals, no matter what you do, you always fall short, you are always a failure, because the ideal is impossible. It is inhuman. They call it "superhuman" - it is inhuman! But it becomes a self-torture, and then whatever you do is wrong. That's what can create trouble for you. So drop ideals and just be.
Become a realist. Once you become a realist, everything seems to be just beautiful and perfect. When you don't have any ideal of perfection, everything is perfect because there is nothing with which to compare and condemn it.
I don't see anything to condemn. But for centuries the mind has been conditioned to condemn. That's a great strategy in the hands of the politician and the priests - they create guilt inside you, and then they can manipulate you. To manipulate a human being is the worst crime one can commit.
August 22
Expectations
if there is no desire, if you have no idea what should happen, then things happen.
People who have great desires can never feel grateful, because whatever happens is always tiny compared to their desires. And because you can't feel grateful, much more that could have happened cannot happen, because it happens only through gratefulness. So you get trapped in a vicious circle: You desire much, and because of that you cannot feel grateful. Whatever happens you can't take any note of; you simply ignore it. And then you become more and more closed.
If there is no desire, if you have no idea what should happen, then things happen. Those things are already happening, but now you take note of them. You feel tremendously thrilled because this has happened and you had not expected anything. If you are expecting that when you go on the road you will find a thousand dollars lying there, and you only find a ten-dollar bill, you will say, "What am I doing here?" But if you had not expected that thousand dollars, a ten-dollar bill is good. And if you are grateful, then from the same source from where the ten dollars have come, ten million can come. But you remain open in gratefulness.
August 23
Hearing And Listening
The art if divine listening - that's what meditation is. If one can learn how to listen rightly, one has learned the deepest secret of meditation.
Hearing is one thing - listening is altogether different; they are worlds apart. Hearing is a physical phenomenon; you hear because you have ears. Listening is a spiritual phenomenon. You listen when you have attention, when your inner being joins with your ears.
Listen to the sounds of the birds, the wind passing through the trees, the river in flood, the ocean roaring, and the clouds, the people, the faraway train passing by, the cars on the road-each sound has to be used. And listen without imposing anything on what you listen to, don't judge; the moment you judge, listening stops.
The really attentive person remains without conclusions; he or she never concludes about anything. Because life is a process nothing ever ends. Only the foolish person can conclude; the wise will hesitate to make conclusions. So listen without conclusions. Just listen-alert, silent, open, receptive. Just be there, totally with the sound that surrounds you.
And you will be surprised: One day suddenly the sound is there, you are listening, and yet there is silence. It is true silence that happens through sound.
August 24
Peeping Toms
People have become completely passive. You listen to music, you read a book, you see a film-you are never a participant anywhere, just a watcher, a spectator. The whole of humanity has been reduced to being spectators.
It is as if somebody else is making love and you are watching and that is what's happening. The whole of humanity has become peeping toms. Somebody else is doing the things, and you are a watcher. Of course you are outside it, so there is no involvement, no commitment, no danger. But how can you understand love by watching somebody else make love? My feeling is that people have become spectators to such a degree that when they make love they are watchers. People have started making love in the light-all lights on, mirrors all around, so you can watch yourself making love. There are people who have fixed cameras in their bedrooms so that pictures can be taken automatically, so later on they can see themselves making love.
When you participate, something irrational starts working. Make love and just be like wild animals. If you listen to music, dance - once the music has become a dance, reason is put aside. And reason can only be a spectator; it can never be a participant. It is always on the safe side, watching from somewhere where there is no danger.
So every day find something you can do without thinking about it. Dig a hole in the earth; that will do. Perspire in the hot sun, and dig - just be the digger. In fact, be not the digger but the digging. Lose yourself completely in it. Become a participant, and suddenly you will see a new energy arising.
August 25
Breathing
Once breathing is perfect, everything else falls into place.
Breathing is life. But people ignore it, they don't pay it any attention. And every change that is going to happen is going to happen through the change in your breathing. Everybody breathes wrongly because the whole society is based on very wrong conditions, notions, attitudes. For example, a small child is weeping, and the mother says not to cry. What will the child do? She will start holding her breath, because that is the only way to keep from crying. If you hold your breath, everything stops: crying, tears, everything. Then by and by that becomes a fixed thing - don't be angry, don't cry, don't do this, don't do that.
The child learns that if she breathes shallowly, she remains in control. If she breathes perfectly and totally, as every child is born breathing, then she becomes wild. So she cripples herself. Every child plays with their genitals because the feeling is pleasant. The child is unaware of the social taboos and nonsense, but if your mother or father sees you playing with your genitals, they tell you to stop it.
Such condemnation is in their eyes, you are shocked, and you become afraid of breathing deeply, because if you breathe deeply; - it massages your genitals from within. That becomes troublesome, so you don't breathe deeply; your breathing is shallow, so you are cut off from the genitals. All societies that are sex repressive are shallow-breathing societies. Only people who don't have a repressive attitude about sex breathe perfectly. Their breathing is beautiful; it is complete and whole.
They breathe like animals, they breathe like children.