Osho: The art of walking the tightrope

tightropeIn this series of Osho talks he examines stories from different ancient cultures. This is an excellent companion to what I teach. Enjoy!

ONCE, WHEN THE HASIDIM WERE SEATED TOGETHER
IN ALL BROTHERLINESS,
PIPE IN HAND, RABBI ISRAEL JOINED THEM.
BECAUSE HE WAS SO FRIENDLY THEY ASKED HIM,
‘TELL US, DEAR RABBI, HOW SHOULD WE SERVE GOD?’

HE WAS SURPRISED AT THE QUESTION,
AND REPLIED, ‘HOW SHOULD I KNOW?’

BUT THEN HE WENT ON TO TELL THEM THIS STORY..
THERE WERE TWO FRIENDS OF THE KING,
AND BOTH WERE PROVED GUILTY OF A CRIME.

SINCE HE LOVED THEM THE KING WANTED TO SHOW THEM MERCY,
BUT HE COULD NOT

How dead are you? If your life is not a roller coaster, then you are not alive.

how-dead-are-youWhat you are, instead alive, is a walking dead, resigned, and settled for the little that, it seems, life has to offer. To you. You see others, seemingly happy, seemingly alive, and you feel regret, shame, and envy.

Your heart, where rain forests and colorful birds, and life used to live, is devastated. The lush rain forests gone, the birds gone, life: gone.

Your ups and downs are tiny, not like a roller coaster. They are about money, or noise, or that you are fat, or skinny, or that you are aging. Irrelevant circumstances.

Maybe it is about someone being sick, maybe dying… but that is also a circumstance.

What if you have something blocking you from growing? The Seven Boulders principle

BoulderSome ten years ago I learned a valuable way of looking at making life meaningful, or living a meaningful life. The teacher suggested that we pick a horizon, a direction, and then look what’s blocking the way of getting there.

Since then I saw that even seeing the horizon is blocked… Blocked by seven boulders, lined up one behind the other, blocking your view, blocking your movement.

So, in my coaching practice, when I ask people to set a direction, and they can’t see any, I am inclined to suggest that they choose the direction: living a meaningful live, or a fulfilled life… without specifying what it is.

Healing… is that a negative word? Is that a sign of negativity?

negative-positiveDid you know that if you say: I need healing, what you are saying is that you are sick?

This includes inner healing, faith healing, etc…

And when you start from something wrong… like “I am sick”, you are on your way to create a context that is misery every step of the way.

If I needed to define what negativity is, it’s that “what is is wrong, and it needs to be fixed.”

Yesterday I was leading my Theta State training webinar, and I felt horrible. Partially, because I wasn’t feeling well myself. Partially because my students didn’t feel well. And yet partially because one of my students wrote to me, and I nee

If you want the good life, you’ll need to “do” life differently

red-rock-coulee-c2a9-2012-christopher-martin-2406If you want the good life, you’ll need to learn some stuff, and unlearn some stuff… but most importantly you’ll have to learn how to and how not to… Remember the how? How you do anything is how you do everything… it is the approach, the attitude, the beingness.

There are a great many ways you can remain unaccomplished, and left behind in life.

Almost as many ways as many people. This is the Anna Karenina Principle.

As with everything, the strait and narrow work

Making choices: are you a rank amateur?

Risk-Management-2This may be the most important article you read this year, this decade… because this article may inspire you to become a professional at living, instead of remaining a rank amateur… aka bumbling idiot.

Risk Management

You have two options. You need to choose. You need to choose the option that has the lower cost to your reproductive success if it turns out to be wrong.

Now, I suspect, that almost none of us think about cost in terms of reproductive success, but according to evolutionary psychology, you are a mere vehicle to your genes, your genes are only inte

As long as you are interested in the “what” and not the “how” you remain the same

winner-losers-whyIf you go about it the same way you have always gone, you’ll get the same results: not much.

I just got an insight I want to share.

There are all kinds of valid sayings that, as it turns out, only tell half truths.

If you do what you have always done… you’ll get what you have always gotten. Meaning: do something different.

But when you do something different, you get the same dismal result.

So what they are missing is the how.

The how, interestingly, points to your beingness. To your approach, not only to the task, but to life.

Because, please don’t forget, how you do anything is how you

When you bought it and yet you can’t see yourself using it…

the principle of taking consciousness out to a spinA few months ago I signed up to a service to create mobile apps, including a mobile app that would make it easier for cell phone users to use this site.

It was mighty expensive, but I thought that if I get just one new customer from it a month, it will pay for itself.

I signed up, and paid the $49 for a few months, but I never did anything with it.

I canceled it a few days ago.

In this article I am going to examine what is the dynamic of this phenomenon: you see something, you want something, and then you don’t do it, y

You block the flow… Spiritual Practices to get you out of your prison

98575990_24_news_la_346792cFew people are intelligent.

Intelligence is a state where you can see the sameness, where you see that life has no boundaries.

Of course it seems as if there were boundaries, but it’s an illusion… cells have walls, but it is permeable, you have skin, but it is permeable, you are a human, but you are just like everything else, built of cells, like most every living being, have genes, like every living being, and your body performs chemical miracles, every living moment.

But most importantly, you live as if you were

A different way to look at priorities

prioritiesI just had a flash… A big bang.

We all have projects, and we all give it lip service, but don’t really do it… don’t really pursue our projects.

So, when a student of mine said: she needed to set priorities, I sent her this

I like the sound of setting priorities, but what is the principle of choosing priorities… what is the goal, the context of your life, that if you don’t achieve it, you’ll have regrets when you die?

Then it hit me: unless you have the context of your entire life and what you would regret, right bef