Archivesaloneness

OSHO Opening to Intimacy Online

One of our most powerful longings is for true intimacy. It is also one of our greatest fears.

This fear stems from the idea that we are unacceptable as we are. As we become more loving and accepting of ourselves, the doors to intimacy with others open and we become free to live in love and friendship with our fellow human beings.

An opportunity to connect fearlessly

“If your intimacy is helping you to grow and to become mature, then it is positive and good and healthy, wholesome.”  Osho

 

“Everybody is afraid of intimacy…. The problem becomes more complicated because everybody wants intimacy. Everybody wants intimacy because otherwise you are alone in this universe – without a friend, without a lover, without anybody you can trust, without anybody to whom you can open all your wounds. And the wounds cannot heal unless they are open. The more you hide them, the more dangerous they become.”  Osho

 
To free ourselves from the fear and self-judgment that keep us from experiencing intimacy, first we need to allow ourselves to experience them at a conscious level and then to let go of them. From the space of meditation, we experience a gap that allows us to see clearly that our fears and self-judgments are not who we really are – that they have been imposed from the outside.

We will use gentle non-cathartic methods to support this process including interactive exercises in pairs, introspection, and group sharing.

Osho’s guidance is that Freudian based work, such as this course, is specifically designed for those from western cultures with western conditioning.

Participants may only sign up for the OSHO Opening to Intimacy course after completing an application form, which is part of the process and thus confidential. To receive this form, please write to bela@osho.net expressing your interest in the course.

Each participant needs to return this application form to the same email address before the start of the course or you will not be able to register for the course.

WHY ATTEND THIS COURSE?

“Without intimacy, you are alone here amongst strangers. With intimacy you are surrounded by friends, by people who love you. Intimacy is a great experience. One should not miss it.”  Osho

 
Once we begin to see how we all have similar fears around intimacy we become more playful and light-hearted in our connections with others. We move from the seriousness of the ego to the childlike innocence of the heart. In the innocence of the heart, we do not define ourselves or others, leaving us free to experience the deepest possible intimacy, that of shared meditation. An opportunity to connect in freedom and joy, playfully and innocently.

This course will give you the confidence to be yourself – open to friendship and love.

WHAT WILL I LEARN?

  • To understand the importance of, first of all, relating intimately with yourself
  • To recognize your parental and social conditioning around intimacy
  • How to relate openly and authentically
  • How we all have an Inner Man and an Inner Woman
  • To recognize and respect your own physical boundaries
  • To understand the difference between loneliness and aloneness, and to embrace the space of at-oneness as the ultimate intimacy

WHAT IS INCLUDED?

  • A LIVE online weekend course. Saturday and Sunday. Approximately 7.5 hours a day with breaks
  • Various techniques to explore your issues related to Intimacy
  • Group processes and group sharing
  • Osho quotes and insights about our misunderstandings around Intimacy
  • Q&A sessions with facilitator
  • OSHO Active Meditations

“Only a man of meditation can allow intimacy to happen. He has nothing to hide. All that he was afraid somebody might come to know, he himself has dropped it. He has only a silence and a loving heart. Once you have accepted yourself as you are, the fear of intimacy will disappear. You cannot lose respect, you cannot lose your greatness, you cannot lose your ego. You cannot lose your piousness; you cannot lose your saintliness – you have dropped all that yourself. You are just like a small child, utterly innocent.”  Osho

Conscious Relating Session

When we abandon our true selves in order to keep the affections of the other, we do so in the expectation of getting something in return. This is a recipe for misunderstanding and resentment.

“Immature people falling in love destroy each other’s freedom, create a bondage, make a prison. Mature persons in love help each other to be free, they help each other to destroy all sorts of bondages. And when love flows with freedom there is beauty.” Osho

 
From childhood our self-responsibility is usurped and replaced with a sense of responsibility for others and their feelings, and we lose connection with our spontaneous natural being. Our love relationships in later life reflect this, becoming a set of mutual compromises that feed our illusions of security and permanence. This kind of relationship may appear to work well in terms of success in the world, but once the honeymoon is over, the question arises for many “Is this all there is?”

A really alive relating, based on an overflow of being-love is an ongoing expansion of awareness and freedom. Unless we are growing in this way our love will stagnate and become a prison.

By deeply accepting ourselves and the other as we are, we transform the irritations and petty grievances of life into opportunities for growth. We become aware of our own blind spots – the places where we have yet to shine light on our unconscious habits and expectations.

In an atmosphere of trust and acceptance this session will support you to move to a state of presence in the here and now. You will experience the confidence and self-trust this brings and discover ways of communicating that enhance growth and freedom in your relating.

“Love happens only when you are mature. You become capable of loving only when you are a grown-up. When you know that love is not a need but an overflow – being-love or gift-love – then you give without any conditions.” Osho

 
This session is open to individuals and couples.

Opening to Intimacy

One of our deepest longings is for true intimacy. It is also one of our greatest fears.

The fear of rejection for who we truly are makes us hide behind a mask and living in pretentions. Only when we learn to love ourselves first, can we invite real intimacy with others to happen in our lives.

Learning the difference between relating and a relationship

“It is because of the pain of love, millions of people live a loveless life. They too suffer, and their suffering is futile. To suffer in love is not to suffer in vain. To suffer in love is creative; it takes you to higher levels of consciousness. To suffer without love is utterly a waste; it leads you nowhere, it keeps you moving in the same vicious circle.”  Osho

 
We learn as children that we are only lovable when we behave in certain ways. Often love is used as an exchange; I only love you when you do what I want you to do. Consequently, we start to hide our true feelings, repress our spontaneous response, and judging our natural self. We learn that being false pays off and we start to live our lives based on lies. Over time we forget how to be open and real. Painfully disconnected from ourselves, we can no longer allow others to come close to us.

Feeling disconnected we confuse aloneness – a state of feeling oneness with the whole – with loneliness. We become demanding on the other for our wellbeing and feeling loved. Instead of relating we create a relationship with set rules entrenched in the same model of substituting an act for love.

We tend to set our boundaries based on the painful intimate experiences we had in the past. We build a wall around us to prevent others coming too close to us. Thus, believing we will not get hurt like this, we live isolated in our well build prison.

“The person who has not known the other in deep love, in intense passion, in utter ecstasy, will not be able to know who he is, because he will not have the mirror to see his own reflection.
Relationship is a mirror, and the purer the love is, the higher the love is, the better the mirror, the cleaner the mirror. But the higher love needs that you should be open. The higher love needs you to be vulnerable. You have to drop your armor; that is painful. You have not to be constantly on guard. You have to drop the calculating mind. You have to risk. You have to live dangerously. The other can hurt you; that is the fear in being vulnerable. The other can reject you; that is the fear in being in love.”  Osho

 
WHY ATTEND THIS COURSE?

In a safe and contained group setting we will explore our wounds, misunderstandings and false believes around intimacy. When we experience that everybody is afraid of intimacy, it invites us to step away from behind our false identity and protective wall.

Realizing that we are all vulnerable and sensitive human beings who were not seen in our lovability just for who we are, makes us less judgmental towards ourselves and others. Learning to love ourselves first will transform our love to an – open hand gesture – instead of clinging or being demanding on others. The other will feel welcomed instead to share in our overflowing heart space and we will mutually acknowledge that love arises from this abundance.

“Love is an open sky. To be in love is to be on the wing. But certainly, the unbounded sky creates fear.”  Osho

 
Opening to Intimacy invites you to take a risk to come out of your comfort zone and playfully meet others just for the joy and fun of getting to know oneself and the other person.

“Love is painful because it creates the way for bliss. Love is painful because it transforms; love is mutation. Each transformation is going to be painful because the old has to be left for the new.”  Osho

 
WHAT WILL I LEARN?

  • To understand that real intimacy starts with intimately relating with oneself first
  • To learn how to lovingly take care of what you hide inside you
  • To recognize your parental and social conditioning around intimacy
  • To understand how we all have an Inner Man and an Inner Woman
  • To recognize and respect your own physical boundaries
  • To understand the difference between loneliness and aloneness
  • That in meditation we experience the space of at-oneness as the ultimate intimacy

WHAT IS INCLUDED?

  • A live 3-day course. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday
  • Friday: approximately 10 hours with breaks including OSHO Kundalini Meditation
  • Saturday and Sunday: approximately 12 hours with breaks including OSHO Dynamic and OSHO Kundalini Meditations
  • Various techniques to explore your issues related to intimacy
  • Individual introspective exercises
  • Group processes and group sharing
  • Osho quotes and insights about our misunderstandings around intimacy
  • Q&A sessions with facilitator

“Love creates problems. You can avoid those problems by avoiding love. But those are very essential problems! They have to be faced, encountered; they have to be lived and gone through and gone beyond. And to go beyond, the way is through. Love is the only real thing worth doing. All else is secondary. If it helps love, it is good. All else is just a means, love is the end. So whatsoever the pain, go into love.
 
“If you don’t go into love, as many people have decided, then you are stuck with yourself.
 
“Hence people are interested in sex, because sex is not risky. It is momentary, you don’t get involved. Love is involvement; it is commitment. It is not momentary. Once it takes roots, it can be forever. It can be a lifelong involvement. Love needs intimacy, and only when you are intimate does the other become a mirror. When you meet sexually with a woman or a man, you have not met at all; in fact, you avoided the soul of the other person. You just used the body and escaped, and the other used your body and escaped. You never became intimate enough to reveal each other’s original faces.” Osho