Day 69 - Osho Meditation Ashram

A very strong and unique experience with many lessons.

Shortly after my last letter I got sick (common cold but a bad one) and my energies plummeted.

On Wednesday one of my closest friends Simon came from Sweden to join me in Rishikesh, which is wonderful and fun.

At the same time, I think the combination of my lower energy and sickness, the first rainy days and the reminder of my world back home which came with Simon’s arrival, resurfaced some challenging emotions from my previous relationship. I reached out to try to establish a friendly contact, but it failed horribly. So the last few days have been a bit heavy.

Anyway, yesterday me and Simon decided to leave Rishikesh.

I’ve been wanting to spend some days next to the river immersed in nature, and been hearing that the Osho ashram is a beautiful place. I knew about Osho and his story, but only vaguely familiar with the teachings and practices, so I was curious.

Arriving here, the place was far beyond my expectations. It is stunning here.

Walk from the entrance to the river.

View from the ashram overlooking the Ganga.

There’s a lot of controversies around Osho and his gigantic following, but I decided to put that part aside, and just be curious about the practices. 

It’s an interesting thing really, that we socially reject everything from a person because of something that person did or was associated with. If you twist it around, why would you punish yourself by abstaining from wisdom or knowledge, for what another person did? I think it’s important to separate the wisdom that comes into this world, and the behavior of humans.

Ok enough about that, now to these practices.

There are four different types of meditations here. They’re called meditations, and in a way I guess you could call them active meditations, but it’s quite far from sitting down quietly and observing yourself.

I’ve had to really work to keep my social and cultural conditioning at bay here, as many of the things could be considered very weird. I’m actually really proud of how open-minded and nonjudgmental I’m managing to be. 

In my opinion, the best way to experience anything is with a completely open mind, and then once you’ve experienced it you can analyze and judge if this was something that suited you or not. This way, I have managed to get inspiration and value from things that were facilitated here even when I felt afterwards that they were not for me.

In general, I would say that the Osho practices are quite therapeutic as a lot of them generate emotional release in form of screaming, laughing, crying, dancing, and shaking. All ways to remove blockages or conditioning that stops us from being present.

So, we start at 7 am in the morning with what is called dynamic meditation. I know that this one is taught by some studios back in Stockholm.

After some warm up dancing, you activate the body with a special intense breathing (fire breathing), you then scream and hit a pillow for quite some time, then shake the whole body with rapid heavy out breath sounds, before coming to stillness. 

The timing of this for me was actually quite good, as I’ve been sitting on some heavy emotions that felt good to scream out. It reminded me of how sometimes when I have strong frustration in my body, hitting or screaming into a pillow actually really helps and releases some of that energy.

After breakfast there’s dance meditation. Which really should be called dance-laugh-cry meditation, because that’s literally what you’re supposed to do. 

Walking down to the dance meditation. Actually loving this music!

First, it’s a wonderful free flow dance to some pretty cool music. I loved this. Dance really is my thing. I can get so into the movement, it clears my mind and can really bring me to ecstatic states of joy and bliss.

Then it’s a laughing meditation where the purpose is to simply laugh out loud. Apparently with some practice, you can easily connect to a genuine laugh from within. On my end, I could generate some chuckles and a big smile, but it felt amazing. Here I could really feel my conditioning being activated and I had to work to keep my mind away from judgement.

One idea from the facilitator that stuck with me was to laugh the first thing when you wake up in the morning. It got me thinking, how wonderful would it not be if you woke up each day and naturally started to laugh out loud from realizing that you’re alive to live another precious day, and from being aware of how crazy and infinitely unlikely it is that we all exist?

I honestly can’t think of a better note to start a day on.

Then, you’re supposed to call out your own name as if you were lost in the woods, and think about a memory or situation were you felt lost. You’re supposed to call it out non-stop, and in the duration of the allotted time, you probably call it out close to a thousand times.

This one was more challenging for me. After about half the time, and after exhaustion from calling out my own name so many times, I stopped and instead started thinking about previous versions of myself and connected to the grief of them not existing anymore. I thought about the young child version of me, but maybe especially the feeling of missing myself this past year when I’ve been struggling with burn out symptoms. This made me cry.

Then I visualized them all still being in me, and started talking to them, which turned into a beautiful experience of making myself feel seen, safe, held, and supported, by myself. 

The practice is supposed to initiate crying, which is an important form of releasing the pain associated to old memories or traumas. ”Feeling is healing”, as they say.

A reminder by the shoe rack outside the Buddha hall, where all meditations happen.

After lunch, the third meditation of the day is called Kundalini meditation.

It starts by shaking the body for a quite long period of time to get the energy flowing and remove blockages. Shaking really works. It makes sense when you look at animals who instinctively do it after they’ve gone through a frightening experience of e.g. being hunted. Even we humans say ”shake it off”. 

Then, the shaking transcends into dancing, before coming to a still in sitting meditation and then lying down to sleep or deep rest.

The fourth and last meditation is the evening satsang, which includes listening to audio recordings of Osho. 

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I have to say that being here has been a very strong experience and I’m proud of how open-minded and excitedly curious (an outspoken intention before arriving here) I’ve managed to be.

I’ve realized that it’s not possible to see the full extent of our own social and cultural conditioning until we put ourselves in a situation where they are being challenged. And becoming aware of that conditioning is such a gift of freedom.

I’ve been reminded of how wonderful it is to live life with a fully open, curious and nonjudgmental mind. And how much more value and inspiration I then draw from my environment and the people I meet. And how I can participate in an experience, without identifying myself with it. That my experiences and my identification/identity are separate. Huge lesson.

One of the biggest things I keep getting reinforced on this journey though, first from the yogis and now from the gurus and this place, is the fearless expression. 

To dance, to sing, to laugh, to scream, to cry, whenever it wants to come through. 

And to realize how it’s only our social and cultural conditioning that holds us back from this. And that once we manage to go beyond that conditioning and the ego, there is just this wonderful free expression of life happening through us. I imagine it literally feels like life flows through us, like surfing on a wave. It must be a wonderfully free and blissful experience of living. I’ve only been getting glimpses of it, but definitely aspire to make it more of my reality. To let my being express itself more freely.

After all, isn’t this the definition of living fully?

Love,

Philip