The Dark, The Light, Jesus, Osho And Me

I'm always a tad taken aback when people are surprised/shocked or judge that spiritual people get angry, have doubts, worry, whine or aren't always little positive, peaceful, balls of unconditional love and light.

I've met lots of Teachers and a smattering of gurus, read tons about more. I have yet to fully believe that anyone is only light and peace, that they never lose themselves if only for a short while.

Now, I won't totally discount it. I definitely don't know much of anything. I do know I'm a total full on skeptic of the highest order while remaining more than willing to be wrong. Maybe the Dalai Lama is. Eckhart Tolle says he never gets angry or loses his inner sense of peace. I can't know their experience and I suppose anything is possible.

But let us not forget that even Jesus got a bit attituded from time to time. He also got really scared and whiney the night before his ordeal (and I don't blame him one bit....sheesh). We have only a smidge of recountings of his days and nights, but my guess is that he probably raised a bit of hell from time to time. He surely hung out with a rowdy group, yes?

I've always wondered what it would look like if Jesus had the same media that Osho or some of the other controversial gurus have had.

It was easy to just pick out a few strategic stories that feed the Jesus mystique and focus on those. No print, no video, no tape recorders to contradict The Truth of the 99.99% of the remaining hours and days we know nothing about. Wait almost a hundred years and you've got the story intact. Have a synod or four, a council or two at Nicaa and poof, total shoring up of The Truth.

Osho, on the other hand, has everything fully documented. No possibility of hiding from any controversy with him, no opportunity for BC/BCE unrecorded spin and soundbites to become fact.

It took Christianity centuries to stabilize and survive. It went through many permutations until it did. I wonder what the Osho movement will look like in a few hundred years. Will the controversy override the gifts? Does it matter so much the behavior of the founder of the movement if the participants get so much out of it? Will Osho end up being deified in some way? (Jesus did not start out that way, but was later voted divine at Nicea). Will Osho's strong followers keep this tradition alive and will it become codified, with a hierarchy and over 1700 different denominations as Christianity did?

And does much of what we attribute to Jesus have to do with "Truth" or more with the fact that we don't have access to the what really happened so are able to create him in the image we need?

Was he really all light and love? I don't think so.

...just as I don't think any spiritual teacher is totally light and love (possible above disclaimers aside).

I feel in my soul that the most profound teachers are the ones who embrace all of Life. They shock us into looking at our disconnected ego judging them for not being perfect. They give us opportunity to remember our own divinity when we are forced to see that we are all humans here and that they are no "better" than we.

I saw an old acquaintance awhile back. He had taken one of my workshops about 15 years ago. He said that after that workshop he had been talking to someone (couldn't remember who) who said to him that of all the people they had ever come in contact with, I was the one who was most dedicated to doing inner work.

What I flashed was "Um...well...ahem...there was a reason for that...." :)

I have done lots of inner work. Even during this last ripping apart cycle, it wasn't like it used to be before. I'm way happier and at peace on all sorts of levels than I was 20, 30 years ago....wayverymuch. It could simply be age. It could be that I would have arrived here without all the inner work. I haven't a clue and I don't care.

I was messed up, but in hindsight I don't think I was any more or less messed up than anyone else. I've discovered that maybe it isn't so much about hating those parts of ourselves that we find imperfect as finding acceptance of them and allowing them to flow through to the next piece of who we are that is just behind it. Because who we are, what we feel and how respond are fluid, open and ever changing.

Maybe like everything else, inner peace isn't about being all light and love but our response to ourselves when we aren't light and love for whatever reason. Maybe the anxiety, depression or stuckness isn't about itself or what's in front of us but rather our response to it and the story we tell that makes us miserable.

Maybe it's that the enlightened ones get angry, but they fully allow it and go postal in temples. The full on embracing of the essential feeling allows it to flow through so return to peace much more quickly than others who will analyse the politically correct way to respond when they're pissed and keep holding it in their bodies, afraid to let their authentic selves expression.

And maybe it's the ones who are OK with all of that, not judging themselves for their responses that are anything other than light and love that get to be at peace more.

Sure has been a big piece for me.

So, sometimes I'm in ecstatic union. Often these days I'm at peace and I don't know why. Sometimes I wake up in the night anxious and can't get back to sleep. Sometimes I love holding my grandson...sometimes it bores me. Usually I am fully accepting of my arteest daughter's moods...and once I got tired of it. Often you'll find me tremendously patient and compassionate. And sometimes my buttons are pushed and I get snarky.

I want and expect my Spiritual Teachers to have problems, to be assholes from time to time, to smile and laugh lots, to admit their shadows and their doubts. Many of the ones I know smoke (and I loved hearing all the judgmental gasps at workshops around that one!!). Some do drugs. Many have strong libidos and sexual kinks. Some get really pissy at times. Others refuse to talk to their disciples and students. I want all of that.

Why? Why don't I want perfection? Because it doesn't feel real to me. Why? Because I, too, used to think there was some end state of perfection that I could attain...that I wanted to attain and that I fell far short of. Because of who I was, I thought it was defined by some outside set of rules of "the way we should be." Because I wasn't all that, and I was a Type A, I used to feel competitive, "less than," imperfect, unlovable just as I was, in a fight with myself to be everything I clearly wasn't. I lived in a constant state of self judgment.

I don't always respond happily when I fuck up, but in the end I like that I'm a messed up ball of imperfection. I like that I fall off the path....and since I'm OK with all that, I tend to get back on it pretty darn quickly. I like remembering and living the knowing that the lighter the light, the darker the shadow, that it's all connected everywhere and that I'm a reflection of that, too.

And the best part of all this? Because I'm OK with all this inside me, I'm also mostlyusuallypretty OK with the imperfections inside you...and the world...and all of it....

And the best part of all that? I get to be pretty darn happy and in integrity in relation to the world.

Art

Photo of Jesus by Kevissimo from his series "TRIBUTES FOR KINGS, THE STATIONS OF THE CROSS" This guy has some amazing photographs and does shows. Yum.