That weekend in 2000, at the amusingly named Ghost Ranch in the desert, we soared together on the bliss of love. Mostly we were meeting each other for the first time in 15 to 20 years. What we had experienced in those wild, pioneering years with Bhagwan - and I’ll use the name by which we knew him back then even though now he is universally known as Osho - opened our hearts and woke us up, day after day after day! Most of us had migrated from our very Western sex-and-drugs-and-rock’n’roll rebellions of the 60’s to adventure into the mystical fusion of sex-and-meditation-and-rock’n’roll with an enlightened Master in India. Our personal Odysseys were as hair-raising as was the mythic journey of Odysseus; ashram life had a way of confronting each and every one of us with our personal fears, our childhood wounds, and the deeper layers of our Western conditioning that even the sixties could not exorcise. To traverse our dark inner labyrinths and to transform our self-destructive demons, there were two great qualities that every one of us had singularly to discover and develop in ourselves. Whether we knew it or not, we were learning to trust and to be courageous.
If you follow the metaphor, to fly on the wings of love and awareness is only possible if you have trust and courage. And as long as you are still living in the clutches of your wounded and culturally inhibited psyche, it’s very hard to even get above ground, never mind flying! Then too there’s the practicing, day after day in your life, until love and awareness become your natural way of engaging with whatever life brings. The ongoing practice constantly calls for your trust and courage so that you gradually become strong and established in both. How beautiful is that!
I’m writing this not only because my friend’s letter inspired me to do so, but also to send to all the people who took part in the Soul-Life workshop this past weekend. It was all about this! So here is your post-script from me: Please, my friends, look after what you found. When something in your life drags you down, turn it into a journey just the way you did in the workshop, and go all the way until you come into your soul-connection with the infinite, and so out into the light and the lightness of being, here, now. This is how you learn to rise - again and again and again - on the wings of your love and awareness. Dive deep, fly high!
