Relationships as Religion

 

 

In Osho’s book ‘The Magic of Self-Respect’, he explains how birth is the first death we experience, where we cross a great divide into the unknown. How we have to leave a world we have become comfortable in, safe, taken care of – and this leaving is forced, it is not by choice or by volition. We then spend our lives creating (or trying to create) a new life where we experience again a little comfort, a little security, we “carve out a little corner of the world” for ourselves and call it home. And then after having spent a lifetime creating it, we are met again with another great divide – another forced leap into the unknown.

Within all of this, according to Osho there is one ingredient that makes the difference between a believer in God and a non-believer, and that ingredient is FEAR. Osho had an atheist as a grandfather and a theist as a father, and so he always had the two to observe, to compare and contrast what they believed in, what they spoke and what they actually lived in fact. His grandfather claimed an absence of fear and thus no need for a god. Until his dying breath, he never called upon a god to save him - from what? He had lived fully, done nothing wrong, had nothing to pay for in the end, and was simply ready to pass on to whatever came next with no concern as to what that could be.

The religious men around Osho, on the other hand, prayed and chanted for hours a day, asking for protection – protection from what? Osho observed only many instances of fear.  Fear was always at the root, at the core and the starting point of religious beliefs and actions.  

I am not however, here to write a book report. I am here to share my own, personal realization I had from reading the first parts of this book, and how even though I have never defined myself as religious, I have used ideas and beliefs in the same ways the devoutly religious do in the book in terms of comforting self with a belief in a god - I saw how we are capable of creating a ‘religion’ out of other ideas - repressing fear with beliefs not necessarily related to the idea of God or divinity, but rather exalting ordinary things not normally deified, creating a personalized religion inside of self to cling to, adhere to, to abandon self for.

“the moment you think of dropping the idea of God, fear comes up. It is a simple indication that with the rock of the idea of God, you are repressing fear; so the moment you remove the rock, the fear springs up.”

What ideas serve as these rocks for me? For you? These ideas which, if removed from your life, will uncover a hidden (or not-so-hidden) well of fear?

There is one paragraph in particular which helped me to identify what I have ben living as a ‘god’ or ‘religion’ in my life, it is as follows:

“You asked for God to be invented because you could not live alone.

You were incapable of facing life, its beauties, its joys, its sufferings, its anguishes. You were not ready to experience them on your own without anybody protecting you, without somebody being an umbrella to you. You asked for God out of fear.”

This hit me like that rock, I felt it hard, as if it were speaking to the depths of me when it comes to how I have lived within my definition and belief of RELATIONSHIPS in my life. And it was not until I deliberately and painstakingly began removing this construct from my life that I began to see the fear it was repressing.

And it has to be deliberate, because relationships, as they currently exist in our society, are omnipresent. It is a construct that exists that is taught to us from our birth, as we are born into them much like one would be born into a religion and know nothing else. The construct is fed and impulsed to us from every direction, including religion. Every media outlet will sell to us ‘relationships’, it even has its own market share, and it is weaved into the fabric or our society through marriage, laws and legal contracts. I would say, the religion of ‘relationships’ is more pervasive than the godly or spiritual religions that exist today, because even atheist and non-believers are still susceptible to hiding from their fear in relationships.

I made a decision one and a half years ago to no longer participate in the construct of ‘relationship’, and decided instead to enter into an Agreement. In an agreement, there is no hiding. There is no game playing, no hierarchy, no manipulation, no control, no room for feelings and emotions, and there is no morality. This essentially has turned everything I have lived and understood upside-down.

It may sound like chaos, with nothing giving direction or holding the partnership in place, because we automatically assume that taking away one thing means replacing it with it’s opposite: without the game-playing there is boredom, without hiding there is only shame and judgment for who we really are in our minds towards each other, without hierarchy there is only conflict, without manipulation there is no fidelity. Without control there is no fulfillment, without feelings and emotions there is nothing but a void, without morality there is no consideration, and so on… but this is not the case at all, because it is only looking at what an Agreement isn’t, or how it is NOT a relationship, instead of looking at what it IS, how it is something that stands independent of the construct of relationship.

An Agreement stands upon principles – doing what is best for all involved. It stands upon commitment, regardless of feelings and emotions. It stands upon holding the best of someone and not letting go of that, even while they walk through their worst. Within this, it stands upon patience, trust, and integrity. An Agreement stands upon accountability and taking self-responsibility – which leaves no space for hiding, for victimization or for blame. It embraces the fact that each individual is a Whole, not requiring to be fulfilled by another. An Agreement stands as ‘two or more’ in the name of the principles agreed upon.And most of all, an Agreement stands upon FORGIVENESS - Forgiveness of Self and the Other as Self. And here I am talking about REAL forgiveness; the kind where you can in one moment drop the past and give each other a blank slate. Start fresh. Start over. Not even one trace of the past or an emotional reaction to it must exist in the minds of everyone involved.

Importantly – an Agreement is created in awareness, and not something blindly fallen into like love, falling in love, blind love. This is because we are in fact broken people coming from a broken system, beaten down by survival, dominated by authority, brainwashed by school, media and culture, emotionally underdeveloped and reactive, and our personalities are deeply rooted in so much fear. This is why you cannot ‘fall’ into an agreement. It is deliberate, it is worked on, it is seen through to the end, despite the discomforts or unbearable points we may face when stripping away the ideas that have kept us safe (from ourselves!) for as long as we can remember.

And it is this ‘stripping away’ of the idea of relationship that exposed to me the hidden fear I had – and not only the hidden fear, but what had become of me over time because of and due to living with this fear. And it is important to note that the truths of me that I exposed to myself were never visible to the naked eye. On the surface, I have been a very independent woman, having worked in careers, supported others financially, travelled across the world by myself, thrived after a divorce, aced my way through university later in life – everything I could have defined as ‘independent’ and ‘fulfilled’, I had done it.

But what I didn’t see until I really dropped the idea of ‘relationship’, was that even while I was alone and feeling independent, unstoppable, empowered: I still caried with me the faith, the belief that one day, I would get my perfect relationship. It was as though one is floating on clouds of hope, keeping one elevated just above the reality of self. The belief that, I am alone right now, but will not be forever.  I will not ever really have to peak under this cloud to see what I have become over the years. I will not have to admit I have been avoiding my fears while busy contorting myself into things that I am not in order to secure relationships; placing the ‘eventual perfect relationship’ as my starting point, essentially disregarding myself and not exploring Who I Am, but rather, who must I be to get into heaven?

“You can either be a person who is a coward, afraid, ready to submit, surrender, a person who has himself no dignity, no respect for his own being – or you can be fearless.”

…needless to say, I have not been entirely fearless. Not at all.

So, what happened as I stripped away the comfort, security, the exalted nature I held of the idea of relationships? I sank deeply into the reality of me – that which I feared - into the void that was there which I had never filled for myself, the parts of me I had abandoned and neglected, thinking and believing it was someone else’s job to tend to.

My demons came out as I tried to escape the reality of me, looking for someone, something to blame, to make it better, feeling as though this had all been done ‘unto’ me by some hand other than my own. I faced the aloneness that existed within me – that utterly alone feeling that drives one to God… or in my case to dance clubs and bars, dating sites and lovely fantasies. That emptiness that comes up from time to time, that motivates you to pray to something outside yourself, or in my case to look my best and go out into the world as an eligible individual, looking to meet her ‘other half’.

Relationship had become my god, my religion with which I covered up my fear of being alone, the emptiness I felt when things that should be enjoyed were not able to be enjoyed, or pain and sorrow seemed too painful to bear by myself. So, yes, it looks entirely different. But if you break it down and look at how we use it, any idea, belief, or construct can be used as one uses a religion or belief in God. It’s only when the fact of the matter (the truth of the Self in the Flesh) is realized and known that one can open one’s eyes to be able to see through the veil of religion, and it’s only through actually DOING it, LIVING it for real that the truth can be fully exposed. The truth of Self exposed to Self– there is no one else involved here.

Interestingly, what I had discovered through walking an Agreement, and a very unique one at that, was that the personal hell I discovered inside myself, the one I had buried, hid and feared, was entirely emotional (not a real, physical hell, not real pain) – because the reality of the situation was that I was not in fact alone – I was in an agreement. All the physical supports and structures are here. Everything I could ask for is Here – just not the participation in the emotions, feeling, conflict, drama, love, attachment, manipulations, control and everything else we do to keep a hold of another person, instead of just standing unconditionally there, Here with them no matter what.

Within this, I can emphasize and relate to those who begin to question or even give up on their gods, and how that can be a painful process. I can also now understand how people can be and become so devout, unwavering, defensive and protective of their religions and their gods. I understand how it is all based in fears – a unique array specifically designed by and for the individual.

Within this, I can admit that I have been devout. I have exalted something outside myself above myself and then submitted to it. I have been a coward in the face of life, and ran away afraid, surrendering my personal power to another, and built a false power on top of a faulty foundation, compromising my dignity, my self-respect for my own being, in believing I required another to do or be something for me.

I only slowly realized what Osho meant when he said:

“If the fear comes up, you have to face it; it is in no way going to help you to cover it with the idea of god”.

So now I am busy facing my lifetime of fears, using the tools of self-forgiveness, self-correction and self-commitments. Relationship systems and constructs had been programmed quite deeply into me by me, by my upbringing, by my culture and my family, by media and television and social circles. Questioning and letting go of something at this level involves shaking foundational parts of self, as self was created on top of this belief system as if it were fact, unmovable, unchangeable. It has, at times, felt like the entirety of me is being shaken, where it feels like there is nothing left of self to hold on to. Yet with breath and breathing, forgiveness and self-change, I have seen that there is always something of me to come back to. And until I am back Here completely, unwaveringly, unshakably, in the physical – I walk, breath by breath, step by step, re-creating myself as I go. Falling, getting up, repeating mistakes, facing the pain and the fear, realizing what is real and what is not. Realizing so much about the mind and how it functions – seeing more and more through the veils based on one point that extends into many other points, moving back to the title of the book that started of the blog, and rediscovering the Magic of Self-Respect.

 

Do Good and Bad People Have a Different Afterlife Waiting?: micro-blog from Desteni Universe

#EQAFEDISCOVERY

Ever since I have been learning about corruption in government and its horrific consequences on people, the abhorrent abuse of children and animals that goes on in the world, the atrocity of wars... I have to admit, I have felt the things described in this recording.

That righteous vengeance that says those responsible should pay for what they've done, should suffer as much as they made others suffer, FEEL the very same pain they inflicted so that they will learn, and never again repeat the same.

Now imagine that I somehow get the power to dish out such consequences upon them, the very same pain and suffering they caused to others... does it make it okay because I think and believe that MY reasons for doing so are right and just? Or does it rather make me one and equal to that which I condemned?

In this recording you'll hear about some of the multitude of factors that causes someone to become a 'bad person' - the worst kind of person that creates pain, suffering and destruction in the lives of others, and what they face at death. About how one must look existentially at the bigger picture of why we become who we become, and how our death processes are unique, individual and deeply personal, not to be compared to one another - much like our processes in life.

This recording, like many others, emphasizes the importance of focusing on self and one's own life process and living, which seems like the most difficult point, yet it is the only way to really be effective.

Enjoy!

Do Good and Bad People Have a Different Afterlife Waiting?

 

Day 258 - Walking Through Hell to Create Heaven Within

I have gone through an interesting experience these past few weeks, where I had had enough – enough with the migraines, enough with the overwhelming fear and anxiety that I could physically feel bombarding my body more often than not on a daily basis, enough with feeling like my body is a prison of constant torment. And so I decided to stop. I decided to stop and be here and be empty. 

It was only after walking an extensive internal mind-process of self-understanding and stopping my participation in thought patterns and reactions that I had been impulsing within myself for years. Going into panicked insecurity about the future, creating irrational fears inside myself, obsessively worrying and planning on top of constantly creating imaginary insurmountable obstacles for myself had become my norm, and I had really had enough. But once the mind-process was walked, I was left with bizarre and unexplained physical sensations moving through me.

The experience at first was very scary and confusing. Isn’t it interesting how our first reaction to new experiences is usually fear, and fearing the worst? The experience was physical, because with the process I walked, my mind had become much more quiet – yet on a physical level, my body was in inexplicable turmoil, with internal movements and sensations that would overwhelm me in unexpected moments. I felt like I had no safe place to go, because escaping into my mind of thinking and worrying would only lead to recycling the very thing I had vowed to stop, and being present with my body had now become of storm of unsuspecting sensations and discomforts that I was reacting to with confusion and uncertainty, opening the door again for fear and anxiety.

 

All I could do was to be here, to breath and to trust myself. This involved the decision to stand through the experience, embrace it, support my body and remain consistent within my commitment to stop, no matter what. What it turned out to be was like a physical withdrawal – the body massaging out the conditioning of what it would go through every time I would bombard it with fear, worries and anxieties to the point of panic and overwhelm throughout the years, possibly over a decade of my life. Where I had now stopped my participation in such mind patterns, and was busy walking a process of trust with my body, showing it that I was a changed being, and that my body could relax now, and let it go.

 

Now, stopping this mind participation was not as easy as making a decision and walking it for a few weeks. This was just the tail-end of a much longer process that began years ago, and was further substantiated shortly after my arrival here at the Desteni farm. I had made a comittment to focus on supporting my body whole-heartedly, doing everything I could, from testing out supplements, exercise, writing out many mind patterns and walking the correction, visiting the doctor and chiropractor, doing research in chemistry and bringing in foods and teas that would support the physical symptoms I was experiencing, talking to and seeking support from others, testing out homeopathy, epsom baths, essential oils, massage, creating a safe, comforting and caring internal and external environment for myself, eliminating destructive things from my life, opening myself up through self-understanding and so much more.

 

I cannot pinpoint or say exactly which thing, path or practice initiated my final letting-go, except to say that I did everything I could possibly think of, and the final application was a complete slowing down and an eventual stopping. I would go for slow walks and just breathe, and anything that would come up or move inside me would be forgiven, let go, and I would return back to breath, repeating this until I could remain stable throughout the entire walk. I would do up to three of these walks a day, mostly alone and sometimes with others. I would focus on breathing deeply from my belly, and at the same time holding my posture in a comfortable and supportive way, which at first felt surprisingly overly complicated! I practiced my application of breathing, posture and Here-ness alone, and then with others.

 

What opened up during these walks was this space inside of me, which I call my safe space, my sanctuary, or my safe-haven. It is a place that is like an unconditional self-embrace that is silent and spacious, where I decide what points to bring in to look at instead of the compulsive, out-of-control thinking I had become used to.

 

I have since continued the walks, and three interesting points opened up. First, I noticed that I no longer always needed to visit this place, and that I was going there now unnecessarily. There was no more constant storm inside of me, there was now an overall calm. When I would go into that space when it was unneeded, I could tell immediately because there is a restlessness. In these instances, I simply focus on my environment, coming out from within myself and being present in the physical, noticing the sights, smells, sounds, or using practical planning to map out the next steps of my day.

 

The second thing I noticed was that on these walks, the distractions and mind-wandering started creeping back in, and I would have to apply myself again. It is as if life opened up and showed me what is possible, and then took it away within the statement: “prove it to me/yourself”. Meaning, it is necessary to develop the self-trust, to prove to myself that it is not just when I am forced through consequence, or that I can do it when it is easy, but that the change is now so thoroughly a part who I am at the very fabric of my being, that regardless of internal or external factors, challenges and obstacles, I Stand.

 

The third thing that opened up had to do with a long held belief I had been carrying around .This belief was that I thought that if I did not have these overwhelming negative experiences within myself, life would be so much easier and I would be able to move myself more effectively. But when the actual reality of the situation settled into me and I into it, I found myself feeling listless, ‘blank’, not really knowing what to do or which direction to move in. Now that I was not being pushed by stress, anxiety, worry, panic and overwhelm, I had to move myself. This is the process I am now walking.

 

Since this time with now some weeks passing, the body sensations have stopped almost entirely. There will be moments where I brace myself for a surge, and then nothing happens, and I remember to simply breathe and be here, and not re-engage with the pattern. Now new experiences are opening up to look at. I am giving myself some time as I peel back one layer after another as I integrate, perfect and continue to walk this one.

 

To hear the recordings that specifically supported me throughout this time, check out the following links:

Fearing the Worst: For how to move through being stuck in confusion/uncertainty/fear/complaining into solutions/forward motion check out this recording: From Complaining to Coming to Solutions -Quantum Mind Self Awareness

Description:  “Why do we so often get stuck in our problems and trying to figure out why things went wrong instead of looking for and acting on solutions?
In this recording, we explore practical methods for getting ourselves unstuck when we are facing challenges in our lives, so that instead of complaining about the things that don’t work, we start developing the solutions ourselves.”

 

Developing an internal sanctuary:  Your Own Personal Happy Place - Journeys into the Afterlife - Part 102

Description:  “Even Superman had a Fortress of Solitude.
Everyone needs to have that space for themselves - their own personal, private “Happy Place” where they can, for a moment, reconnect with themselves.
Lilly shares her experience of how creating her personal space of sanctuary allowed her to be more grounded and light-hearted when things got tough, and how we can do the same for ourselves.”

For an explanation about my physical body sensations, what they are and why they happened, check out: I am Real - Quantum Mind Self Awareness

Description: “What is reality? Are you real? And if you are, how would you prove it? Where does reality become real for you?
These questions may seem like philosophical ones that lead to nowhere but a splitting headache. But what if there was an answer to these questions that not only allows you to connect with greater purpose and enjoyment in your day to day life, but also makes those moments of your reality that much more meaningful?”

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