#but i find it so funny (read: devastating) how my psychiatrist has spent YEARS trying to diagnose me as bipolar and i was just like

[picsofsannyas]

Interview with Indivar. Osho Darshan Diary. The Great Nothing. Monday 4.October 1976.

Maneesha: How did you come to hear about Osho?

Indivar: I can tell you about the actual event that happened, but really it seems as if all that has happened up to this time has been a preparation for coming here.  And looking back it seems that everything was necessary-even those things which were difficult or painful at the time.

But specifically I was having lunch with a woman-she’s a lecturer in psychology and she’d been to India and just returned. She said, “You should read this,” and put this book into my hand and I felt this current going up my  arm, and I said, “What’s this?”  That was “No Water, No   Moon‘.  And of course I was gone….that was it.  Anyway, I read the book-and that was the first explosion.  Prior to this it’s been quite a long story.

Maneesha: Can you briefly outline the things that you see as having been major points in bringing you here?  Did you have any spiritual inclinations or see your self  as a seeker? Your a psychiatrist  aren’t you?

Indivar: A clinical psychologist.

Well, it’s been there for as long as I can remember, even as a small boy.  

I trained as a clinical psychologist and after five years out of post-graduate school, I suddenly became aware that I knew nothing about what I was supposed to be doing. So I began to look into the nature of anxiety and discovered that there   are two different sorts: pathological anxiety-which is at once or at the same time, protective-and then the existential anxiety: the anxiety of death, the anxiety of feeling meaninglessness, the anxiety of guilt-that life demands something of you.

This led straight into existential philosophy, which led directly into Zen, because existential philosophy says that you must commit  yourself totally and do totally what you think and believe and then learn from the experience.  So it is total commitment to depression, anxiety and all these things.

Then it just exploded and took off from their.

Maneesha: So your coming here seemed to be just a  natural step in going deeper Into psychology, or were you also seeking something for yourself?

Indivar: Well, I never at any time wanted to be a psychologist. As long as I can remember it was always, “What is it all about?”  And this was just naturally the next move and the thing to do.  I just followed it.

Maneesha: So having become interested in Zen, what happened then?

Indivar: My first long service leave came up seven years with this particular employer, so I thought, well, theirs only one thing to do-three months in Zazen.

I did it and it was exhausting! I  stuck half an hours  Zazen, half an hour working or walking or chopping wood, and then back to Zazen-for three months.

Then I went back to work and this Indian appeared from nowhere through this woman, and he told what I’d been doing had been making too much effort, too much aggression, that I’d been making too much effort, trying to attack it.  He more or less became my teacher-Chaitanya  Nitya Yetti.  Whenever I came across any difficulty, I would write to him and he would know  the story. I’d never at any time thought of him as my guru, though I loved him very much.

Then I met Maharshi-such a beautiful man. His main thing was to ask “Who am I?”-which I simply became  aware was irrelevant. What you have to focus on is the feeling of what you call “I” or “me“. So I began to do that, and I was doing that until I came here.

I keep a picture of him in my room.  I keep meditating on that all the time, and it does exactly the same thing that Osho’s picture does-it goes blue, interestingly enough.  I always keep it above me in the room in the clinic where I work and whenever I’m in doubt, I stop and just sit and look at it, and people to start to cry and to roll on the floor and just do so many things.

Maneesha: Were you keeping up meditating regularly all this time?

Indivar: Yes, I was.  Every morning at five o’clock I’d get up, meditate for an hour and then go to the clinic.

Maneesha: Can you say something more about the changes in your work?  You were becoming more passive, less of a  doer?

Indivar: Yes.  When I went into the study of anxiety and then into existential approach, this led to a whole great outpouring of what I call ”therapy by repetition“.  What I would do was to take whatsoever  was presented and just get a person to repeat that.  Doing that would reinforce the thing they were trying to avoid.  A great explosion of emotions used to come out and it was miraculous.

Maneesha: Had you any experience of encounter groups and that approach?

Indivar: Well, any therapy you like to name I’d used. Eventually I reached the point where I did nothing, because more and more you realize that unless this whatever it is-this force of grace-is there, everything else is irrelevant.  So you simply allow the person to get in contact with this grace-what Perls calls the wisdom of the organism … simply allow that to take over-and that’s it.  It just all fall’s into place.

Maneesha: What were your impressions, your feelings, on reading Osho’s books, about the person who had written them?

Indivar: As if I’d known him for thousands of years. It was incredible.  I’ve fallen In love with four women in my life and really gone into this madness. Osho was the fifth!  [Laughter] It was incredible.  Just to read something: Ooohhh…too much!  Put it down!  It was like that.  It’s the only way I can describe it.  The same feeling exactly as falling in love.  It’s almost just too painful stay with.

Maneesha: So how did you finally make the decision to come here?  

Indivar: There was really no decision.  It was a question of when I could arrange it.  This long service leave came up and I made arrangements and got in a housekeeper to help my wife-which is interesting because Osho has been talking about the femininity in people and I am very much aware of the feminine me.

Maneesha: How have your family been reacting to your moving into meditation?  Have they been quite receptive?

Indivar: Well, of course my wife thinks I’m mad. She’s a  doctor, and being trained in the rational   mode of medicines he finds it difficult it to enter the  sphere, which of course has made quite a  rift. I’ve found meditation extremely helpful in dealing with the reactions that come. But the children surprisingly enough have been brought much closer to me.  In fact when I meditate they come and sit here [indicating  his lap].They stay there-not talking, just sitting,  particularly the younger one-she just sits….just sits.  The older ones not so much.  I was just thinking about that.  Perhaps they were too old to experience whatever it was. Maneesha: Can you describe your first feelings on seeing Osho?

Indivar: I just felt so….well, like coming home…as if I wasn’t  meeting him for the first time. It seemed quite normal: there he was and it was an “Oh, we meet again” sort of thing.

And when he asked whether I wanted to take sannyas I thought, “Well, that’s ridiculous!  Why is he playing this game?  Of course he knows I’m a sannyasin !I mean-how absurd! ”Because you know, it didn’t matter because he obviously knew what the score was and it just seemed to be a game really.

Then the groups started. That was an experience in itself.

Maneesha: They’ve been very powerful for you?

Indivar: I only lasted twelve hours in the Enlightenment Intensive. I became aware of just what a full vessel I’d brought with me.

Maneesha: What do you mean by a full vessel?

Indivar: Well, full of ideas, expectations, and also the realization that I’d been very much of a monk in the world, been strenuously striving not to strive. I could hardly speak or move or do anything, and I was completely devastated.  I spent about three days recovering before I went into the Tao group.  It was like recovering from a long illness.

Maneesha: And how was Tao?

Indivar: Well, for the first two days I found myself reacting almost automatically-doing the things I’ve been doing for the past twenty years without thinking about it.  Then on the third day Prasad became filled by this energy-I didn’t know  at the time. He was saying, “Indivar!  Indivar!  Touch my foot!  Touch my foot!”  And I thought, “Well, that’s a funny thing to say.  Why does he want me to touch Is foot!  Well, I’ll touch his foot If he wants me to.“ So I touched his foot with my hand and aaahhhh!!!  This great scream came out of my body…as if it wasn’t me.  I knew that something  was making it, and it just came-a great scream.  So I sank to the floor  and fell back. It was so beautiful.  I didn’t know where I was.  I was just nailed to  the floor.

They tell me people were coming and touching the body and having abreactions….screaming.  There was one  girl on the foot, weeping.  I was  spaced out completely. And that was the end!  I’ve never been the same since.  That was another explosion.  There have been many more since, but that perhaps was the one thing which just went beyond reason because here was something unbelievable, but it happened and what it was I haven’t the faintest idea. It happened and I experienced it.  And it happened three times in the same group.

Maneesha: Do you have any sort of energy experiences when you’re near Osho?

Indivar: Only in Darshan-Not in the lecture. I do in my room-when I’m doing Zazen, or when I’m running: running is beautiful. In fact that was the first way I discovered what centering was.

For many years I’ve been running about six miles every day.  One day, going beyond the point of exhaustion, I suddenly began to float and I thought, ”This is strange.  What is it?”  I started weeping.  I wasn’t running-I was floating and tears streaming down my face! I thought, “I’m going mad!” It only happens when you’re absolutely exhausted and just pushed beyond that exhaustion. It only lasted about two hundred yards and then I collapsed; that was it. It wasn’t until I read “The Book Of The Secrets” that I found out what it was: Your thrown to the center.

Maneesha: Of what about Tathata.

Indivar: What became apparent in Tathata was the reconciliation of the opposites. I would be directed to a passage in a book and it would open up on the opposites and about having to experience  everything from one end to another. So taking these and reconciling them was the key thing that came up in Tathata.

Osho told me to read Lao Tzu.  I couldn’t get a copy of him so I got Chuang Tzu instead. So I go fishing with Chuang Tzu. He’s crazy!  He doesn’t even have a rod. Going fishing without a rod!  What fisherman goes fishing without a rod? I ask you.

And you know what he does? He just sits on the river and looks at the river and he doesn’t do anything.  So I sat there and then I said, “Listen mate, your enlightened and all this stuff, but tell me, what about these fish?”

He said, “You want fish?  You sit there and watch!”  And suddenly all these fish start jumping out at me-big ones, small ones, pink ones, thin ones saying, ”Take me!  Take me!” I thought, “This is fantastic!  I have to try this!”

The next morning I get up really early and I sneak off to the river leaving Chuang Tzu behind. I go and sit on the river and I sit in his seat the way he was sitting.  I sit there and become very still and then what happens?  The whole river falls in on me and everything else disappears…just falling.  It was incredible. I don’t know how long it lasted.

I wrote a letter to Osho telling him about this, I put it in my pocket and of I marched, and you know what happened?  The first thing he said when he came in the lecture was, “Do not  hang on to any spiritual experience, no matter how ecstatic or blissful. ”So how about that?

But then of course the principle of  non striving, which has been perhaps the greatest single thing coming here, came up in the hypno- therapy.  If I was running and everybody else had stopped running, I’ve always been the last to give in, which of course has its positive side.  And this non-effort-which is not of course, not doing anything, but dealing with what comes along….And its most strange because what you seem to need comes along without your doing anything. And I find that in a way I’m back to where I started but the difference is that now I can do  Zazen without  effort.  

One of the single greatest experience is also came in Hypnotherapy, when under hypnosis. Santosh said that I would only have an hour to live. It was almost as if it was true-I believed this.  So I went up on top of Krishna House on the roof and began to write in a notebook what I would have to clear away and then suddenly, ”This is ridiculous!  What does it matter?  In fifteen minutes I’m going to be a dead man! Nothing matters!!”  Suddenly the heavens sort of opened up.  It was impossible to do anything.

Then I said, “Well, I’d like to say goodbye to Prasad. We said goodbye. Then I thought “Well, what will I do now?  “I said, “Where’s the best place to wait?  Of course,  at the gate! ”[of Osho’s residents.]

So I just went and sat by the gate. I sat there and there was no future because I was going to die and the past didn’t matter. Suddenly I was just being in the here and now. And I knew what he meant-just to be there….the sun shining, the birds, the trees, the ground. It was all so beautiful….so beautiful and peaceful and still, I could have died then it was so beautiful.

So there was this awareness of no effort, no future, no past-only now, If you’re there, there’s no striving, no striving for the future.

Maneesha: And the quality of your Zazen is of less effort now?

Indivar: Yes, well, it’s not really Zazen anymore.  It is watching these thoughts coming up.  It’s like going to the pictures: I’m just sitting there and watching all these things coming.

And also I’m getting these feelings or commands or whatever they are-being told to go to such and such place, to be here, to do this and to do that; so I just do them. Simple things-I sit in my room alone and the voice says, “Put on your best gown and go down to the coffee shop.”  I think, “All right-I’ll do that.”  Then someone comes up to me and says, “I want to talk about Rajneesh,” so I sit and talk about Osho with them.

 Yesterday someone came up-a movie maker from Australia who wants to make a movie about Osho-so I brought him to the lecture this morning. The day before that, it was an industrialist from Bombay who has this world interest in advertising-I brought him along to the lecture.  And all the waiters in the Blue Diamond, and the housekeeper, they stop me and say, ”What about this Osho?”  So I stop and talk to them about him, and they ask for books….Very strange.  

Maneesha: So this having  directives from inside is something that’s quite new?

Indivar: Yes!

Maneesha: And the lectures…. Are they an intellectual stimulus for you or do you find you go into a meditative space during them?

Indivar: I just go into some kind of space. But always if there’s a question to be answered, the answer always comes up in the lecture-like the letter I told you about. Just comes.

Maneesha: You described how you got here as being a natural evolution of your work. Do you see that it must be everybody’s next-everybody who is involved in therapy, in psychology, psychiatry, the human potential movement?  Do you see this realm as being a  natural follow On?

Indivar: I think that which therapy has done is all right up to a point, but once you’ve reach that point you then have to jump into the abyss.

Their are two quite different journeys as you probably know.  There’s the outward journey-you have to acquire an ego-there’s no other way.  Like Osho says, if God didn’t want man to have knowledge he wouldn’t tell him about the tree; Man would still be wandering around in nowhere, not even aware of the tree of knowledge.

So there’s this outward journey-there’s this acquiring of the ego-and all these so-called humanistic therapies are concerned with ego fulfillment-which is more or less conventional psychotherapeutic treatment.  You know-”OK will fix you up,” and so on and so forth.  Its okay, but it’s only the outward journey. Then we must return back to the source

When I see that a person needs prompting or pushing on the outward journey…always with people now it’s trying to see whether that point of readiness is there, to begin the return journey.  And my own journey into myself has shown me that the more open we are, the more open we become-that openness is your gift to others.  So I’m not concerned with all this psychology and everything.

Maneesha: So you could say that these therapies bring you’re ego to a crystallization; to a point where it’s fulfilled and so naturally starts to rebound?

Indivar: Well, you reach a point where you think, “What the hell?  Here I am and I’ve got all these things of life, but it’s still meaningless.  I’ve achieved everything-but so what?  I’m still exactly the same.  “You have to reach the point of seeing the nonsense, the emptiness of all achievement.  But it depends…Some people become much more ready even before this.

And that’s interesting because for some of the most seriously disturbed people I’ve worked with-even some schizophrenics-this in itself has been sufficient. They have become very spiritual. It’s quite extraordinary One alcoholic, for example, who had been an alcoholic of very long-standing and had thrown himself of a seven-story building to commit suicide and had crippled himself -he came along.  He just went straight into self-observation or the self remembering of Gurdjieff, just like a duck takes to  water. He was just ready for it, and all I did was to be a catalyst.  This has been happening more and more.

Maneesha: What were your first impressions of the ashram?

Indivar: Well I came with conceptions or ideas of what it would be and was rudely shattered when I found it was nothing like that at all.  The thing which was most noticeable was the indifference of people. I was surprised about that. I thought, “stone the crows!” [Australian for, “Good heavens!] What’s the matter?-so serious. Not interested in each other. I couldn’t care less, you know, it doesn’t make any difference to me, but I could see that it would for someone else.  Since I’ve been here so many people have come to me and I just sit and listen and I wonder that perhaps there is a need for this-for a person to whom people can go because  their are always people in a crisis or with problems. Maybe this happens-I don’t know.  But it was just a thought today that this could be quite valuable.

But I see this indifference as a kind of selective device. Particularly for people with expectations or any ideas that they’re special-which we all feel sometimes. As long as there is an ego, one thinks one is special.  So I see it as the first hurdle-a selective device.

Maneesha: what does Osho mean to you?  Do you experience him as a personality or as an energy force.?

Indivar: It’s almost as if he’s throwing me back on myself.  He sort of took hold of me and gave me one hell of a shake and then he said, “All right mate!  Back you go now.”  And I know what you need is within your self. I still have a tremendous feeling for him but if I were to leave now, it would be quite all right.

Maneesha: So he’s more of a reflection for you rather than an entity in himself?

Indivar: Yes.  What he is, is within me, and wherever I go, whatever I do, there is no separation.  What ever he is-that energy-is always there, always has been.  But coming here was absolutely necessary

                                              

[quaintlouise]

#thequinneffect

I spent the morning of Quinn Harper’s birthday angry.

I'd been thinking about how to make the significance of my contribution to #thequinneffect worthy of the importance of Amber in my life. That's not shade at/on (which is correct? I don’t really care, do you? Lololololol. Be Best.) anyone else's participation, it's just that Amber and I share a bond born of tremendous grief. Loneliness. Loss.

We both know that pulsing sternum when people remind us of God's plan.

Thanks, random coworker/neighbor/third cousin on FB who has an affinity for minions (???). But God's plan for this chapter of my life is so sad/hard/cruel that I haven't yet had time to reconcile with all that seeing as this death/diagnosis/devastation hit me three days ago, or three weeks or however long it takes for me to understand, or never understand, or until FMLA runs out.

We know the confusion and sadness at the disappearance of loved ones you'd never imagine would leave your side. The annoyed satisfaction when loved ones act as poorly as you would have predicted. The friends and family who stepped up beyond belief and the acquaintances who did the same and became family. We also know the loneliness that descends once you realize those loved ones need to deal with their own BS that continued or began during your crisis.

Anyway, I was angry at the world. Angry that the Ruszkowski’s have been denied the type of family that seemingly everyone else gets. Angry that my little girl will grow up without her twin. Angry that I got cancer. Angry about the heartbreaking cruelties that leave mothers with empty arms and children without the arms of their mother to hold them. Angry that instead of pinning ideas for Quinn Harper’s first birthday party, Amber is instead bravely trying to find ways to honor her daughter's sweet soul while managing her own sorrow.

I grew surlier as I walked past the windowless steel door at the OBGYN, the one they usher you out of when things go terribly wrong.  

I’m sorry to tell you I have very sad news.

The heaving sobs subside a bit when you are hit with the fresh air from a door you didn’t know existed. Best to keep the waiting area free of the weeping formerly expectant parents, I suppose.

I'm sorry to tell you that you have cancer.

We’ll need to fill you with poison...just enough not to kill you; poison with ingredients of mustard gas and platinum. Then we will take your breasts, uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes and cervix. You’ll need thirty rounds of radiation on those fresh scars. This might keep you alive. There’s also a special pill you can take that will shut down all the rest of your estrogen production! This may be the hardest part of treatment. Surgical menopause at 38 is gonna f with your head. There is no way to relieve the symptoms. Antidepressants might help. Oh, I see you take some. Wow, you’re on a lot of meds. Perhaps that’s part of your problem.  

Nah. My problem right then, on Quinn's birthday? Was the gynecological nurse who read my chart, looked me dead in the eye, and said

I’m not sure what you’re here for?  

Me neither, lady. Me neither. But actualllllllly the surgeon (y’all referred me to) built a cuff (TF? Can they come up with a better word?) down there so my insides don’t fall out and this is the place you go to get that looked at?  Also, thank you for the offer of the lap gown, however, I’ll just leave my skirt on and take my panties (old maternity underwear) off. Oh? Oh yes, thank you for correcting me that it is a breast gown I’ve turned down. Fitting!  

It was an easy walk across the street to get another blood draw after a full round of bloodwork three days earlier.  

Your white count is low. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about but we need to check that again and call me this afternoon for results.

Awesome.

I asked if I was going to be one of those rare cases where the chemo causes leukemia. The neurologist deadpanned that I was funny.  

I proceeded that day to my psychiatrist and managed to overwhelm her with all my new diagnoses, calendar of appointments, and general complaints of apathy, mania, obsessions, rage, malaise, guilt, forgetfulness, indecisiveness, impulsiveness blah blah blah.

She upped the valium.

I drove around for a while. I sang sad and angry sounds at the top of my lungs in the car. I contemplated buying a pack of smokes.

I pulled into Little Flower and felt hopeful that just sitting in a pew listening to the quiet would spark something.

The door was locked. (When did they start locking church doors???)

I wept. I stood in that parking lot scattered with cars and I wept tears of just pure despair.

But then I looked up and I saw the prayer garden. Circular, with small benches surrounding a statue of Our Lady. Or maybe it was St. Therese. It doesn’t matter. Behind it was a small labyrinth with instructions to enter with an open heart, meditate while walking the labyrinth, and exit it with a peaceful thankfulness. I sat on one of the benches to try and clear my head. I figured I’d pray the rosary and then it occurred to me that it was Tuesday. Of course.

The Sorrowful Mysteries. Eyeroll. I couldn’t get glorious or joyful? Something uplifting? (See what I did there????)

I said my rosary. I was cold (wearing a skirt, remember) and weepy and feeling like I was too screwed up to get it together to honor little Q.

But something happened as I fell deeper into meditative prayer (I know, I know, who am I?).  A peace fell upon me at the fifth mystery.

Woman behold your son. Son behold your Mother.

The sun at that moment hit my face. I looked up to the sky and saw the moon as the clouds swirled.

I smiled. Took a deep breath. Because it was then that I knew.

I knew that it was in the arms of the Blessed Mother where Quinn Harper is safe and loved.  

As am I.

As is Amber.

As is my Bridget being my earthly life to end.

As are all the motherless babes and the babeless mothers.  

A droplet of rain glimmered in the brief warmth of the sun as I entered the center of the labyrinth. I felt hopeful. I turned to exit the labyrinth and saw my body cast a long shadow through a row of boxwoods in the shape of the cross. Make of that what you will.

Rather than me doing something to honor Quinn that day, she helped me. Helped me acknowledge some of my grief, helped me find solace in prayer, helped me look for other ways to find peace when the obvious path of day drinking alone at the View lost its appeal when I remembered you couldn’t smoke in bars anymore.

I blew Quinn a kiss and made it through the day.

However, I knew I wasn't done and I left my heart open looking for a way to pay it forward.  

On Saturday I received a text from an old friend that I hadn’t talked to in a while. The kind of friend you can not talk to for a while or months or years but is still family.

He and his husband had signed up to be foster parents and had been (long-term? permanently?) placed with two little girls, 3 and 4. Sisters.

And then I knew. I knew how to pay it forward in honor of one little girl to two others that so desperately needed it.

That night I sent a Target delivery of cabbage patch dolls, coloring books, crayons, fruit snacks, juice boxes, cereal bars, pajamas, cuddly blankets, bath toys, kiddy spoons, forks, bowls and plates, goldfish crackers, pudding packs, mini muffins, peanut butter, honey, uncrustables, raisins, bubbles, a bubble machine, bigger kid sippy cups, shampoo, tangle spray, string cheese, mandarin oranges, mac and cheese, smoothies, pull-ups, wipes, fridge magnets, Rapunzel, Cinderella, peanut butter crackers, and stickers.

I felt joy. Joy that these little girls had warm beds and a loving home. Joy that my friend had been gifted this experience. Joy that a contentedness had befallen me as I felt my contribution to #thequinneffect was complete. Joy that even though I knew all too well that contentedness is temporary, so is sorrow.

For years I've been saying "When I start my blog...". I think this is it. Post #1. Could be the first of many, could be the last. Whatever, I did it.

Thanks, Q. I owe you.