An article from a sannyaisn, Swami Swarum, has been published on the homepage of Kindred Spirit Magazine, the UK’s leading guide to Mind, Body and Spirit for the past 25 years. Since summer 2014 Kindred Spirit has become part of Watkins Books, London’s oldest and largest esoteric bookshop founded in 1893 by John Watkins. Watkin’s has a good mystical bookshop just close to Trafalgar Square and can be highly recommended, if you want to have a day off from internet book shopping!
The article is at
Hey, looks like I’ll have to renew my passport for that!
´Kindred Spirit´, Kavita – and what a nice name is that; sounds like a promise of a meeting point in friendliness: And Friendliness, the real one big letters I mean, a tangible, sensible (like from being ´kind´ with an ´open mind´… as we are talking here also about a bookshop!) has got a bit rare these days in internet-times, I feel.
While bombastic adverts like ´Akasha` and numerous similar you find nowadays pretty much at every corner, if therewith a new vegan or fake vegan sandwich creation is meant.
Yes, I like the name of this meeting place and space near Trafalgar Square even though I will not be able to go there that soon (or ever).
Btw, Kavita, was your remark a bit ironic or sarcastic or did I get some flavour in between your lines – wrong ? Hope so (that I did it get wrong…).
Have a nice day/night/here – evening.
Did miss your comments.
Madhu
Well, Madhu, it was a very natural response; as you say, “some flavour in between your line” was more like it but also can’t deny being sarcastic.
I would have appreciated this article in 1984, when I started doing Dynamic Meditation!
More you experience the life, more you know simplified and generalised versions of life sound good, just like love in the pop music.
As disciples is it not important to ask when Kindred Spirit Magazine is in publication for past 25 years why “Sheela” stopped publication of ‘Osho Times’, the flagship magazine founded by Osho himself?
No
“Why “Sheela” stopped publication of ‘Osho Times’, the flagship magazine founded by Osho himself?”
Sheela did not stop ‘Osho Times’ publication, Shantam. She merely changed the magazine’s name
to ‘Osho Nursery Rhymes’ in an effort to make it absolutely clear what sector of the reading public the magazine was targeting.
Yes…and body needs food, clothes, shelter, rest, sex etc. & most of the people spend their entire life just keeping body alive. Who has time for spiritual mumbo-jumbo?
Walking, running, swimming, dancing, bicycle riding, sports etc. give the same results as active meditation.
”Walking, running, swimming, dancing, bicycle riding, sports etc. give the same results as active meditation.”
This is not true. None of these sporting activities have a cathartic element.
It works for me.
& for so many people in the society.
Who could possibly doubt that, Kusum?
Arpana says, “None of these sporting activities have a cathartic element.” I disagree with what seems to be an opinion formed round lack of experience.
Watching a bunch of rugby players having a go at each other certainly is a spectacle containing a strong element of catharsis, the bringing of repressed emotions or experiences into consciousness, thus relieving tensions.
I swim every day and if I need to let go of something out in the sea there exists plenty of space to do it.
I no longer run, but there was a period in my life when I ran a lot and it just so happened that it was during a time in my life when I needed to express and work out a lot via catharsis. If you do a good 20 km run and you want to break your record it often requires getting out of your mind to do it.
Besides, I am happy to have reached a point in my life where I do not have a need for cathartic meditations in my life. Thank God for that, because in the long run I think they can be counter-productive. The Beedie Wallah actually addressed the issue and I tend to agree with him.
I reckon Osho would have agreed with that also. Living for years around Osho, I realized the policy in general was to move into a more meditative mode of living, not jump up and down every morning, going hoo hoo hoo and then screaming your head off. Good for a start, but then it’s time to move on. Good to know meditation with cathartic elements exists in case needed, but really they have little to do with meditation as such.
There is also the danger of making a habit out of say, Dynamic Meditation. This was certainly the case with me. I could not face the day without a pre-dawn catharsis. It sounds ridiculous now, but I have to admit that I had to wean myself off it.
Then we have dance. Come on, Arpana, you don’t believe dancing your heart out has a cathartic element? Gimme a break! I am sorry, man. Your need to defend all things Osho, even when not under attack, is something you might want to let go of. That is, next time you do dynamic meditation. Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!
Give me a break. I’ve played rugby. Don’t try and tell me a game as competitive as rugby is meditational. Apart from the fact that it’s then followed by all that boozing and bawling. YOU don’t have any experience of rugby if you can come out with such shite.
99% of dance takes place drunk, and high on ecstasy, particularly on Ibiza. Meditation my arse.
Your need to diss Osho is about your morbid need to cling to the delusion you are the only individual who ever got involved with him who has anything worth saying.
You’ve got more in common with the Roman Catholic co-dependent patriarchs on Ibiza than you have with anyone who has ever explored meditation at length.
Kusum is a parrot, by the way.
@Arpana…
Parrot??…Why not cuckoo?
Cuckoo displaces the other from the nest. No chance of you doing that, Kusum.
That you can compare rugby with meditation just proves what I know about you. Your experience of meditation and its effects is extremely limited.
Ooooooh! Arpie has been at the nippy sweeties again. He will get cavities in his falsies.
Anyway, I’m off to rugby training, then a booze-up and a brawl afterwards. Now, that is what I call real tantra. Pass me that bottle and I’ll sing you all a real song about the eleventh zen bull.
Kusum is my new guru.
Ye gods, but that’s lame. (#)
Interesting list, Kusum.
But there is one activity you have omitted: If you want to get in touch with your body; if you want to get your breathing going and focused in the present moment. Then go down the gym and lift weights. It really does tick many boxes. (There is even a mild kind of cathartic effect, especially when you are struggling to reach the target you have set yourself. Which is released when you succeed).
I am convinced that as you get older, weight training is the best chance you have for all- round health. As it strengthens the body by requiring it to maintain muscle mass. (Perhaps in preference to it using any spare calories that it has to fund the growth of cancer cells?).
I am not surprised that it is not on your list, and therefore, neglected. As it is also hard work.
Totally agree, Anubodh.
I go to the gym six months of the year and the other six I swim.
Apart from the exercise in the gym I also dig the vibes. Everyone in the gym is there because they want to feel good, thus creating a great social vibe. My gym also has a dojo with serious martial arts types, screaming and sparring with each other. Some of those people are way beyond being a black belt and I experience them as some of the coolest folk around, very centred, very present.
You’ve forgotten to mention the cool, wonderful vibe of the Roman Catholic priests, Lokesh.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Kb8uRASktw&ytbChannel=Chad%20Raskovich
Lots of Testosterone today… isn´t it? Not only on the British London SN website; City Life Munich has (same time) sent the pickpocket gang on tour – not only cyberstalking and stalking but stealing as ´testosteronial mission.
Every now and then they seem to be in need of something which was in contact with my body. Cool? Those kind of cretins may be cool for you guys but you claim to be centred (black belts etc.). Today was one of those days to get stolen again of personal stuff.´Two year-olds´ in the bodies of grown-ups.
Quite a testosterone website today this afternoon. What a synchronicity to that which happened when I was outside the flat today.
And don´t see my remark is like a flat-liner; I see the multicoloured women´ s section of this kind associates same, same.
WEIRD and STUPID and MEAN
and
OFF THE WALL.
Like your viral contributions same time ´here´ today on this website.
Madhu
P.S. for Arpana:
I experience you as quite a multiple split personality with indeed multiple various frames (or maybe there is an `Arpana-Team´ too). Just one of those fractions is to go into gear for Osho quotes every now and then, which indeed hit a target.
Otherwise…reminds me often of the two to four year-old characters to crush whatever comes under your feet and then share with us your LOL(s) or whatever in longer versions or puppet version.
Sometimes pervert and sadistic too.
As it is a website, you don´t mind, and others here obviously don´t mind either. But I do.
When I read here that late Dharmen was with Andrew Cohen for quite some time, I´ve been quite shocked, I must say. As I really know that there are other Psychopaths around in the spiritual communities nowadays. Mostly they are IT – technically very much talented but Heart is missing.
And I do mind their obnoxious influence and de-humaness, often even claiming to shed` Light by living and acting out their pathology and influencing others to do so.
We’re actually a gang, Madhu. 47 of us. All having access to this account. None of us are actually sannyasins. None of us have ever meditated. None of us are capable of acting properly, of making a sincere, honourable decision. None of us have the slightest perceptive or discerning ability.
Interesting post, Madhu.
Just for the record, when I mentioned the martial arts guys at my gym being cool I meant just that. They are very relaxed people. On certain levels I admire their maestro, a humble, playful, family man who always has a moment for a friendly exchange. I sometimes watch him as he walks toward the gym. He walks like a cat and his eyes positively sparkle. For me, a real master.
Yes, believe it or not, Lokesh, “I knew you” meant just that with these your words.
It’s just the context of happening…when you guys, each of you others, try to get the match ball, so to say. And today – as I shared it – such had a synchronicity context too, and I made clear what I mean, I guess.
And believe it or not, Lokesh, I came to know some of the Ibicenco flavor too, although long ago. Anyway, the so-called ´world´ is quite a small one nowadays, isn´t it? And some thirty, some forty years ago, it was easier to change a circumference (if needed) than nowadays.
These last years writing here into SN/UK chat and trying to communicate, I experienced your writing as honest, whether I did like it or not, and often inspiring too. And even if you were the one and only who recommended to me to piss off in early 2014 (you did it your way), I stayed up to now.
Often reminded of this parable Osho shared:
What first may have a very bitter taste may taste better – if not sweet if you drink it all (this Chinese wisdom, you remember, the two ´philosophers´..?).
Anyway, I meant what I wrote and I wrote what I felt and meant today.
Sometimes – enough is simply enough!
Madhu
Cool, Madhu.
No need to get defensive, Lokesh. I’m sure someone as perceptive and discerning as Madhu will realise how special you are, how far above Osho you are.
We can all read, you know. You make it pretty clear you look down on him. She’s not stupid.
“Lots of Testosterone today…isn´t it? Not only on the British London SN website; City Life Munich has (same time) sent the pickpocket gang on tour – not only cyberstalking and stalking but stealing as ´testosteronial mission.”
Madhu,
Stealing is not necessarily related to testosterone. There are also girlie gangs who are perfectly trained in this job. For a teenie it is easy to come close to you.
What did they steal from you?
Yes, Anubodh, I use gym occasionally as well, but mostly I prefer outdoor activities as fresh air is also very important to me.
Beloved Osho,
Here is one question from Kusum:
“Body needs food, clothes, shelter, rest, sex etc. & most of the people spend their entire life just keeping body alive. Who has time for spiritual mumbo-jumbo?”
Would you be kind enough to answer this question which can be in many people´s minds?