Re-Defining 'Existence' With Osho Zen Tarot - Day 4 of 21

“This naked figure sits on the lotus leaf of perfection, gazing at the beauty of the night sky. She knows that "home" is not a physical place in the outside world, but an inner quality of relaxation and acceptance. The stars, the rocks, the trees, the flowers, fish and birds - all are our brothers and sisters in this dance of life. We human beings tend to forget this, as we pursue our own private agendas and believe we must fight to get what we need. But ultimately, our sense of separateness is just an illusion, manufactured by the narrow preoccupations of the mind.”

‘Existence’ to me means everybody and everything that is here, that we are all One, and that there is in fact a grand design that we are playing out. The important distinction between my understanding and that of most religions, is that I do not think anything will be handed to us, meaning, it’s not about waiting for anything or anyone, but rather it is about our direct participation. So, how do I do my part in sorting out existence when I am only one person? The answer to this is simple: I sort myself out, and I do it in such a way where I share my process openly, publicly, for anyone that wishes to do the same or participate and engage with me in this process as they sort themselves out.
What I mean by ‘sorting out’ is where we purify our thoughts, words and deeds by understanding ourselves and why we are the way we are, and transforming those bits that are not best for all life. By ‘best for all life’ what I mean is that if everyone were to behave in the same way, would the behaviour prove to be a benefit or a detriment to others. By ‘others’ I mean everyone and everything here in existence. There is some limitation here, wherein we are limited in what we are able to do by the physical reality within which we exist.

Check out this Self & Living video for a further understanding on how to live What’s Best For All:

With this card, what I want to focus on is the Oneness of all life and all of existence, where, within this Oneness, there is the principle that we belong here, we are at home here in this existence. The truth is, we have not been living in such a way that honours this, but this is what I would like to change within and as myself. And within this, I would like to experience myself as ‘at home’ wherever I am here in this existence, because I am working WITH it, and not against it.

What is preventing me from being ‘at home’ wherever I am, where that “inner quality of relaxation and acceptance” is interrupted? It is my own internal emotional state, almost like a state of fighting, judgment, competition, resistance and polarity that is constantly playing out within me.

Whether it is fighting, resisting, competing with, judging and polarizing myself within myself, or whether I am participating within these constructs with others, these participations that are going on in my mind are preventing me from being at home Here, within existence and within myself, and I am ready to let that go.

Being ‘ready to let that go’ does not necessarily mean I can simply make the decision and drop it all in one moment, as these patterns have been playing out in my mind and thus my life since I can remember, and they are programmed into the very fabric of me. This is why it is a process, but within this process there is a time for decision making. This time for decision-making can be moment to moment, and in this moment, I am deciding once again that I will let go of fighting with myself and my reality – to accept reality as it is in this moment, to embrace it, to trust in the existential process, and to do everything I can to change myself in such a way where my actions, words and deeds are aligned with what is best for myself and everything else that is Here.

So, when and as I see that I am feeling inside myself like things are wrong and I do not belong here, like I don’t have a place or a home, I remind myself that within me there is a deep an unconditional self-acceptance and acceptance of the reality I am living in at this moment. This acceptance does not mean there is no room for improvement… in fact that is the biggest room. We do need to change, but we can’t fight what is here. Rather understand it, define it, learn how to communicate and interact with it, and redefine who I am within myself, and therefore within it all.

Now to look at the word ‘existence’ itself, to sound it out and see what solutions I can hear that might be hiding within the word.

Egg Stance.

Lol! That is a bit funny… but I like the principle of the egg, because what is an egg but pure potential, containing all the ingredients ready to burst forth into life, so long as it is properly incubated and cared for. And that is the stance we have to take in order for an egg to realize it’s potential - it must be cared for during these vulnerable moments of development.

We cannot force an egg to hurry up and hatch already. We cannot fight the egg and there is no use in judging it for how long it takes or what processes it goes through to become a living thing. Eggs do not compete with each other at this stage, each one instead focuses only on its own development, using all of it’s resources to work to develop life.

And so, this is the stance I take with myself, incubating myself with the utmost care, consistency and self-responsibility to honour the development of my utmost potential. It is not easy to change oneself at such a fundamental level, we must be gentle with ourselves. In this, also remembering that we are standing as the point of both incubator and incubated, we do have a large amount of responsibility we must take for our own self-development, so gentleness is not the only ingredient. There is a certain amount of discipline, pushing, even sternness we must take with ourselves.

Within this, I take complete self-responsibility for who I am within any given environment, where I make sure that at the same time as pushing myself, I remember that I belong Here, I am at home because I am at home deep within myself, within the understanding and realization that I am an equal part of this existence, I am one with it, and so there is no need to fight, to judge, to compete, to compromise, to limit, to polarize, to resist, to react, to blame, to spite, nor to do anything that would deny me of the reality that I am always at home here, in this existence.

To learn about how embracing self within and as self-acceptance in this way can lead to opening the door to self change, listen to Bernard for 3 minutes - it is a 3 minute investment that will last you a lifetime.