I Know Timeless Moments

by Disha

Enlightenment...to write about it has been so hard for me. Funny thing, ’cause it has been the focus of my life for 24 years, since taking sannyas at the age of eight. I don't know if this topic is difficult because I feel unenlightened and ashamed that, after all, I know so little, or if it is difficult because I know enlightenment and my mind just can’t put words to it.

In the last days I have asked myself the question, “What is enlightenment?” This question has been like a koan in the satori process, moving deeper and deeper into my being as a powerful exploration. But this article is overdue for Viha, and the page is still blank.

So I will just start with what I know.

I know timeless moments in my life where I am a vehicle for Existence, just as Osho was a vehicle. Something vast and impersonal takes over, sometimes in stillness, sometimes in action – speaking from a great depth, pouring love unconditionally – and everything and everyone around me is divine. In those moments there is enlightenment, and I am gone. I am in deep gratitude and awe, and I know that life is living me the way that I was born to live it. I live for those blessed moments, and, in them, I am ready to die in trust.

Then there are moments of riding the roller coaster of my personality, feeling special or like a failure, identified and suffering, and I am convinced I couldn’t possibly be enlightened because enlightened people are beyond all that.

Coming to Osho when I was a child has been an incredible blessing, and the older I get the more I can appreciate it.

But it also conditioned me thoroughly to have expectations and concepts that have been a big barrier, hindering me from going into my inner journey with fresh eyes and innocence.

I spent a long time waiting casually for the Big Bang. I wanted Existence to burn me like a thousand suns. I wanted to die and be reborn, to be nothing of who I was before, and to be able to look back on a date and say, “That's when it happened.” I also expected it to happen by my 21st birthday, as a natural progression of being around Osho – just like that. But Osho left His body three months before that birthday, and I had to have a good look at what I had become and how much of Osho I had been taking for granted. It broke my heart, and urgency and longing started burning in me. I became a “seeker.”

Doing the Miracle of Love and then participating in and facilitating the Path of Love for the past seven years has brought a huge transformation to my life. In the first years, I felt like I had to rip away at all of the hopelessness and resignation that made me feel like I missed Osho's boat. I needed to scream it, pound it, shake it, and deeply cry it out of every cell in my body. Sitting silently and witnessing it just wasn't going to do it for me. I wanted to dig in and go through layer after layer of  “me” until I found permanent enlightenment. It was goal oriented. I wanted a big change; I wanted to know that I had done everything that I could do. I got on my knees again and again, offering up everything I could, including my anti-Christian sannyas conditioning, and found a sincere asking, a prayer to Osho, to Existence, to God to help me, to take me – ’cause this journey is one I don't know how to make alone.

This way moved me deeply – feeling my devotion and surrender to Osho, my emotions and my restlessness, my dissatisfaction and my power. Being able to pour it into my active search brought me to a depth that shattered my patterns and my personality as nothing ever had before.

I didn't find “permanent” enlightenment. But I did find that when the search was total, the finding was instant. The depth of my dissatisfaction, felt right down to the core, is the divine taking me home.

The group Path of Love was my practicing ground, a safe place where I could forget about everything except my longing for truth for eight days and eight nights. The real path of love starts when the group is over and life comes at me every which way, and I feel the Divine not only in bliss, but also when I am totally freaked out, when nothing is going my way.

This poem by Rumi is a deep inspiration for me:

This being human is a guesthouse.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness
Comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows
Who violently sweep your house
Empty of its furniture
Still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
For some new delight!
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
Meet them at the door laughing,
And invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
Because each has been sent
As a guide from the beyond.

What has grown is my trust to stay open, even when I am scared, when my ego feels threatened to death. I have learned to know deep down that I can trust in the unknown, that Existence wants me to wake up. Osho showed me that so beautifully.

In the last few years the quality of searching has changed. The raging fire I felt has become more like a silent blue flame, and my prayer has changed from an urgent asking to a very still YES...to what is. My longing is not about disappearing and melting, but a longing to have roots into the earth to help me stand in the world and in the divine in my daily life, the courage to live it, and the strength to stand alone. This longing is not as emotional and sweet, but more sober and cool. I can see even, as I write, how quickly my mind wants to a make new concepts to replace old ones, so tricky – maybe the longing has its tides, one is not better than the other, and it will keep changing throughout my life.

I don't know if I am “getting” enlightened, and I still don't know what enlightenment is. At the end of a Path of Love and in all incredible moments in my life, I see that enlightenment is as multifaceted as the number of human beings on this planet. I see awakening and the eyes of Osho again and again, in sannyasins, in nonsannyasins, in the eyes of my beloved, and in my own eyes. And for some it is to be in bliss, for others it is to have peace of mind, or to live without shame and fear, or to be a guru, or to be still with no thoughts, glowing, radiant.

Devoting my life to enlightenment is what is most precious, and my own awakening seems connected with sharing with people, supporting other human beings to live their potential, as best I know how. Life is my daily Master, finding truth through disappearing in love, as well as through the pain of separation. Feeling loved by God through the eyes of my dog, feeling shaken by what is happening in the world, and facing the terrorism that is inside me.

I don't like the word nonsannyasin anymore. At a time like this, the need for enlightenment, big or small, is so global that I would love to drop that distinction. And I know that what we have been blessed with by Osho is something that needs to be shared, generously, abundantly, wildly, unconditionally, and urgently.

Lately, my most beautiful meditation is writing and singing about my path, expressing my gratitude in songs for Existence, singing my love for Osho, singing my pain and my fear, singing my heart out and sharing that with the world on a CD. The surprising thing is that the biggest response to my very intimate songs has come from strangers, from people who have never heard of Osho or done a Path of Love. And that blows me away...

In Pune, I started offering groups for teenagers, and I want to do that here in Byron Bay. It is such a joy for me what I received from Osho when I was young, and I would love to find a way to share that with teenagers. I don't know how to do it yet, I am scared of doing something new and feel shaky and clumsy stepping into the challenge of “the world,” but that's not going to stop me. I don't have time to wait till I am enlightened to share what I have to give.

ananddisha@hotmail.com