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OSHO Opening to Intimacy Online

on 26/11/2021 31/01/2023 519 Views

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

on 28/07/2020 22/08/2022 277 Views

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

on 28/07/2020 31/01/2023 622 Views

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

Opening to Self-Love

on 28/07/2020 31/01/2023 423 Views

An opportunity to confront the internalized negative voices we have been collecting since childhood. Understanding that the self-doubts and judgments we have about ourselves are rooted in these same voices, allows us to question them. From this clarity we learn to step out of this superego attack. Using awareness to reframe internally what truly belongs to us and what we are made to believe about ourselves by others and the society.

Just being ordinary and loving yourself for it!

“Once you are incapable of loving yourself, you will never be able to love anybody. That is an absolute truth, there are no exceptions to it. You can love others only if you are able to love yourself.” Osho

We live in a world that honors only prestige, and our schooling systems teach us competition and comparison. Children are judged by using shame and guilt. We learn from very early onwards to reject ourselves, because rarely are we loved just for who we are.

Our self-doubts and judgments are sustained in the learned behavior of comparing ourselves with others. With self-love we become less and less self-centered. We no longer need to prove that we are better, bigger, more beautiful, or intelligent then others. We can just relax in who we are.

Group sharing allows us to see that we all have similar beliefs that get in the way of our self-acceptance and that we are all sensitive, human, and worthy of love.

“Real love knows nothing of the ego. Real love starts first as self-love.
“Naturally, you have this body, this being, you are rooted in it; enjoy it, cherish it, celebrate it. There is no question of pride or ego because you are not comparing yourself with anybody. Ego comes only with comparison. Self-love knows no comparison; you are you, that’s all. You are not saying that somebody else is inferior to you, you are not comparing at all. Whenever comparison comes, know well it is not love; it is a trick somewhere, a subtle strategy of the ego.” Osho

WHY ATTEND THIS COURSE?

Opening to Self-Love is a beautiful opportunity to gain an insight into the ways we reject ourselves, and to see that everyone has the same beliefs and fears that stop us from being loving and compassionate to ourselves and others.

With a clear understanding and experience of these inner mechanisms, the old habits of self-rejection and doubt begin to fade away. This allows us to open to our own intrinsic and unique beauty and to rediscover our essential value. When we open up to loving ourselves, we find that our meditation deepens and happens more easily. It also opens the way for positive and loving relationships with others.

“I teach you self-love. And because I teach you self-love, you have to be very alert. Self-love does not mean selfishness. Self-love is possible only if you drop the idea of the self – that is the paradox – if you unself yourself.” Osho

WHAT WILL I LEARN?

To recognize your parental and social conditioning around self-love
To understand that self-love makes you selfless
To learn how awareness unhooks you from your negative internalized voices
To understand the concept of the superego
To understand the difference between self-love and being obsessed with oneself
That meditation is an act of self-love

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 self-love
Individual, paired and group exercises, designed to bring our inner critics into the light of awareness
Osho quotes and insights about our misunderstandings around self-love
Q&A sessions with facilitator

“Love starts with self-love. Don’t be selfish but be self-full – and they are two different things. Don’t be a Narcissus, don’t be obsessed with yourself, but a natural self-love is a must, a basic phenomenon. Only then out of it can you love somebody else.

“Accept yourself, love yourself, you are a creation of existence. The signature of existence is on you and you are special, unique. Nobody else has ever been like you and nobody else will ever be like you; you are simply unique, incomparable. Accept this, love this, celebrate this, and in the very celebration you will start seeing the uniqueness of others, the incomparable beauty of others. Love is possible only when there is a deep acceptance of oneself, the other, the world. Acceptance creates the milieu in which love grows, the soil in which love blooms.” Osho