ARTICLES

From Devapath

This article was written for the OSHO FESTIVAL in Rimini, italy, where Devapath presents his work every second year.

BREATH, ENERGY, ECSTASY

MY FIRST BREATH

My first breath was a real difficult one – but one of great liberation too! In the end of a long birth I finally was taken out of the birth channel and started breathing in the cool and threatening surrounding of the operation room. This frightening experience left me with a shallow breath, a fear of the new and a longing for a deep breath in trust and relaxation. I looked for powerful shots of oxygen – in wild childhood play, endless sports as a teeny, sex life and finally dynamic meditation.

A milestone in my later life to get my breath back was my first breath session in 79 when I came to Osho’s Commune in Poona. We were breathing in a group with beautiful music and it felt like tons of emotional tensions from the past were releasing. Everybody had left for lunch already but still I was lying in the grass and couldn’t stop crying. In my first breath session I felt like newborn in thousands of tears.

In the following years to work with the art of breathing and relating became my passion. I left my job as a physician in hospital to become an Osho therapist, created a big growth centre, worked first for fifteen years in Osho’s Commune in Poona and today in his commune around the globe. I love to tell you why this simple breath is so incredible to find new energy and change your life – as it did mine!

THE MIRACLE OF BREATHING

Truly our breath is a diamond, which needs to be rediscovered and polished to shine with all its facets into each dimension of our life. A colorful spectrum of breathing devices is waiting for us to be used for deepening and refining our breathing. It allows us to grow into amazing experiences of pleasure, intimacy and spirituality. Once our breathing balances we find deep harmony in life.

A good breath brings great health and inner transformation. But living in constant hurry and over activity we are insensitive to the most beautiful jewel we carry inside of us. A good breath oxygenates, energizes and cleans our body. It clears our mind and balances our emotions. It is preventive medicine. The profound health effects of physical exercising, the pleasure of sex or the silence of meditation are all related to our breathing.

Especially one function of our breathing is widely forgotten: it gives our body a healing massage from the inside. The movement of our diaphragm, which is the big breathing muscle in the centre of our body, gives a constant massage to our inner organs in belly and chest. It cleanses them from waste, allows a good blood circulation, oxygen supply and keeps us young and healthy.

SAILING IN THE WINDS OF LIFE

Enjoying your natural breathing is like sailing in the winds of life. Life is breathing you! Life is moving you and you just have to allow it. You just need to learn to be flexible and trust the changing winds to carry you where existence wants to bring you to. Learning the art of breathing is like becoming a skipper who knows how to navigate his boat through the peaks and valleys of the ocean waves towards new adventures.

Life before birth is a preparation for the first breath. Life after birth is learning in the art of breathing in love and consciousness. Life after death is disappearing into eternal breath. Breathing changes gradually from us being born towards the end of our time. However the wave of breathing carries us through our entire life from the wild seas of our youth to the silent waters of old age.

Consciously surfing on the wave of breathing make us discover the intensity, the vitality, of each moment in our life. It gives us a perfect experience of living totally and joyfully in the eternal play of birth, death and rebirth. Trusting life and going with the flow is the philosophy of natural breath. When breathing in and out is in harmony we enjoy the orgasmic meeting of life and death in the experience of love.

THE JOY OF TANTRIC BREATHING

Tantric Breathing teaches us the art of love and intimate relating. Many of us miss a deep energetic understanding of themselves and their intimate relationships because of their superficial breathing. We have learned to use breathing for controlling instead enjoying our pleasures. Thus we cause frustration, miss the treasures of our body and get afraid of breathing in intimacy.

Tantric Breathing is reconnecting to the energetic roots of our sexual body. Once we enjoy our self and all what life has given to us, we can relax, heal and grow into love and freedom. When finally deep breathing reaches down to the sex centre again, it opens the spring of our life energy. Our contracted energies can melt and move again and give us the power to live totally and ecstatically.

It’s too good to be true, but right breathing opens our selves in all directions and dimensions of life. Breathing with sensitivity and intensity we can melt rock like physical, emotional or mental tensions. We get roots to grow strong, creative and independent and wings to fly into the open skies of the soul. Beyond all life negative attitudes we celebrate the juice of life like innocent children.

BREATHING RELATIONSHIPS – TANTRIC RELATIONSHIPS

Why is breathing so important for our relationships? And what has it to do with Intimacy? These questions nobody asks because the power breathing is widely forgotten in the world of relating. Not analyzing our relationships but changing our way of breathing alone and together allows love and harmony to grow.

Out of the fear of aloneness partners intend to control each other and get stuck in dependency, fight and jealousy. Now the attitude of control brings even more superficial breathing patterns and a greater leak of trust than we already developed in the course of our conditioning. We kill the joy and the ecstasy of relating by killing our natural deep breath.

Control brings unnecessary suffering into our relating while breathing in trust and playfulness opens for the treasures of intimacy! You breathe in love with your self and your love for the other has a foundation. Your relationships will have a beautiful fragrance and can help to heal your inner wounds caused by the leak of love.

Breathing relationships are tantric relationships. They allow you to relax into your energy and grow from passion into compassion. Keeping your breathing open and flexible you pass with ease through the fire of intimate relating. The day will come when the pain of loneliness transforms into the celebration of your aloneness. Finally you can rest in the silence of the heart. You are reborn.

THE CIRCLE OF TAO

The Taoist circle of life begins and ends with breathing. You are born into life with your first breath. You travel through the journey of life developing your human needs: drinking, eating, moving, having sex, reflecting, rising in love, enjoying arts and finally becoming spiritual. As the circle starts with breathing, so it ends with breath. Each need can become a spiritual discipline. But only passing through the whole circle makes you a truly whole being.

You have experienced all dimensions of life and you are ready to come back to the most simple your have experienced in the beginning of your life. You come back to breathing but this time consciously. Observing the outer breath you become aware of your inner breath – the cosmic breath. You are reborn in the womb of existence. Through breathing you have discovered the secret of life.

 

This article is about the big inner growth centre OSHO MIASTO in Tuscani, Italy, which is home to the OSHO BREATH ENERGY SCHOOL

MIASTO, MY LOVE!

THE MYSTIC MOUNTAIN

For the first time I came to Miasto in the nineties. I still remember how mysterious it felt driving through Tuscany in the sunset along the highway from Firenze towards Colle Val Delsa. Entering the last kilometres up to the mountain through the dense forest was like entering the hidden path to a mystic castle.

With Shunyo, a good therapist friend, I was facilitating a program called “Transforming the quality of life”. Originally it was a three month long program in the Osho Multiversity in Poona and now we wanted to bring a taste of this beautiful process to Miasto. We had a very sweet group of participants and really enjoyed having our morning sessions in the group room and in the afternoon a work project outside.

Our work project was to create a little sitting area for meditation and contemplation in the forest at the little pond in the very back of Miasto close to the back entrance to “Dream Woods” – Manfredos artistic wonderland of miniature stone cities hidden in the dark forest. Today, whenever I pass there, I still enjoy remembering this beautiful experience.

THE JOY OF LIVING INTENSELY

Some days ago a friend came from the Mystic Rose Meditation Retreat and I asked him how he felt in Miasto. He could not wait answering and it popped out of him: “Great! Great! I love it! It was so intense to be there!

Exactly this is what I feel whenever I visit – everything is so intense – from the meetings with friends to the therapeutic work in the group room or the daily meditations. For almost twenty years I spent a good part of my life in Osho’s centres and communes and here in Miasto I realize what we all have learned in these years – the art of living intensely.

Some people say, to be with Osho is like living through many life times at once. I agree and being in Miasto gives you a real taste of it. The day is full of joyful activities that there is no time for the mind to think, to worry, for getting depressed or whatever our “normal problems” are. We are just living a little more in the moment and that’s the secret to enjoy our life a little more too!

Before the mind gets started you are already in Dynamic Meditation. After shower and great breakfast – the croissants in Miasto are the best - the group session starts and throws you into your inner world. Ah, great lunch is coming! And off you are already for the next group session followed by famous Kundalini Meditation.

Then comes the peak of the day – Osho’s White Robe Brotherhood and you dance ecstatically before Osho talks you into the land of inner peace and silence. At dinner, which is always a masterpiece of Miasto’s fancy cooking crew, you realize how fast the day has passed. You feel like living through a whole lifetime in one day, fulfilled and happy. And what was the key? Intensity, totality!

A MULTIVERSITY FOR HUMAN GROWTH

For fifteen years I have worked as a therapist and later on also as a director of the Centre for Transformation, which was one of the faculties in the Osho Multiversity in Poona. Osho wanted us to bring all approaches of human growth to His commune to help us preparing for his meditations. He created nine faculties and called this university of life a Multiversity.

I love this approach and I always had the dream that one day it can become a model for all universities in the world. The beauty of Miasto’s group program is that its program is deeply embedded in this vision and truly offers the best methods for inner transformation, which you can find in the world.

I like that it keeps us therapists connected even if it’s only for a short meeting of saying “hallo!” or sitting in the evening meditation together. I like it because it shows that many ways can lead to meditation and people from many corners of the world can come together.

Since Miasto introduced the living in the commune program I also feel a big change of energy happening. It feels more and more like one organism moving together and where I am included even if I am a guest only for a short time. It feels a new space of friendship has opened, where residents, living in the commune program and group participants move together.

As a therapist I love that finally I have a program available, which I can recommend to people who have done lots of therapy and look for an experience of living in a commune like the one I had in my communes – friends who want to move from individual and group therapy to communal therapy.

CELEBRATING WITH FRIENDS

Miasto is really a unique place! Once in a while I participate in Dynamic Meditation or lead it in Buddha Hall. Afterwards I love to have my first morning coffee in the rising morning sun on the terrace in front of the bar. It’s so romantic! – I love the Sannyas celebrations Sunday evening when friends celebrate their spiritual rebirth by getting a new name. There is so much heartfelt energy and mind-blowing ecstasy like most people can only dream of!

Yes, Osho White Robe Meditation is my favourite meditation and I still remember how it was in the beginning when I came to Miasto. The Buddha-hall was quite empty for the evening meditation and once I asked a staff member: “ Why is nobody coming? - “It reminds us too much on the church!” was the answer. I thought, wow, you little rebels, that exactly Osho is de-conditioning us from. Rebellion has passed and today it’s really far out.

Yes, I love this gathering of friends where there is no therapist or participant anymore and we all sit together in the luxury boat called “Osho White Robe Brotherhood” sailing towards the eternal ocean of love and consciousness.

Have you heard about “Osho Miasto Village”? That’s how I call the community of friends, which have settled around the commune of Miasto and which grows year by year. It’s amazing to go to Saturday night’s dinner and disco in the warm summer nights, the Osho celebrations or the New Years Eve party and see how the village comes together and celebrates.

It’s lovely to live in this surrounding of friends and be able to explore inner and outer nature. I enjoy so much Nordic Walking and a mountain bike drive in the forest or on special occasions to visit with friends one of the great Italian restaurants around for a good pizza. A little trip to Sienna, to the ocean or one of the hotels with swimming pool and hot spring close by makes life here really juicy.

A SPIRITUAL POWER STATION

Last time when we left Miasto my beloved asked me: “Can you also feel that leaving the place your energy changes?” – “Yes!” I said and we remembered that each time when we come here we have a similar experience. Entering the compound is feeling like getting connected to electricity and leaving it is like unplugging from it.

Exactly the same I have experienced in all strong Buddha-fields with Osho – being it in Poona or on the ranch in America or in the European Communes. It is like recharging my spiritual batteries for moving on along the path of transformation.

I travel around the world and I am always looking forward to come back to Miasto to recharge my batteries and be with friends. That’s why I have also settled close to my most beloved Buddha-field. Here I can feel Osho being so present and here I can allow my little Buddha inside to relax and take a deep breath again.

This rebellious place of friends has not only resisted several attempts to close it down but has developed in such a way that it feels like being in the garden of the beloved and rejoicing on the divine path of love and meditation. I have found my “Little Poona”.

Thank you so much, beloveds of Miasto! Thank you so much, Osho!
Devapath

 

Once breathing is perfect,
everything falls into line.
Breathing is life.

OSHO