Everything......is grace...

This is the realization that hit me when I was in the gym yesterday. Absolutely everything that has happened to me has been a gift of grace and I couldn't see it because I was too busy searching for evidence. What I realized ia that whether or not the lack of sight in my right eye has anything to do with the spiritual experiences and insights that I have had that everything is a gift of grace. This realization has left me profoundly humbled. At the moment I am reading Osho's Book of Secrets and everything I read resonates so profoundly. I would like to think that I am the female version of Osho as he writes everything that I think. I can't believe that I dismissed him for so many years because I decided that he was a guru who had feet of clay just because of his Rolex watches and fleet of limousines. But what I also see is that I didn't reject Osho but my identity did because it knew that once I touched Osho and his writings that its days were numbered and yet the identity is never totally transformed, it has layers and layers just like the layers of an onion. The identity put simply is our animal nature. It's sole purpose is for survival. To embrace and be compassionate to this animal nature of ourselves is to be well on the way to freedom.

Many years ago I did a 10 day silent Vippasana meditation retreat in India. I was totally amazed at how when the silence was broken on the 10th day at how difficult I found it to speak. I knew what I wanted to say, but somehow the words wouldn't come. I have thought back on this many times and from it I saw just how powerful silence is but there was something else that I knew was there about silence but couldn't put my finger on it. Last night I read it in Osho's book of secrets where he explained that it is easier to go from sounds to the soundless than to come back from the soundless to sounds. He gave the example of Meher Baba who kept silent for 40 years. At certain times he would write a note about when he would break his silence but he never did. According to Osho if you remain silent for three years then the mechanism for sound is gone and talking becomes impossible. This is the missing piece of the jigsaw for me. I could see this process beginning in how difficult I found it to speak and that was only after 10 days. I would love to know if it is like this in the silent orders that still remain. Of course, I am taking all of this on faith from Osho. Part of it corresponds with my own experience which is so important when on this path. Vigilance about being hoodwinked is one of the most important qualities to have on a spiritual path. To be spiritually discerning.

This brings me on to the subject of the types of people who follow a spiritul path. Essentially they are of two types. The intellectual and the devotee. I definitely fall into the former category. I am always reasoning and trying to fit what I read with my own experience. Not with my thoughts and feelings about what I have read but about what my own experience and intuition tells me about what I read. This is why the writings of Osho resonate so strongly with me at the moment. Yet even my intellectual seeking had humility. I remaining saying to the Divine 1% of me is true and authentic, you make that stronger and let me work on the 99% that is arrogant, superior, out to prove that you are just a mechanism in the brain. I think it is this that has kept me safe thus far on this path.......