We start making every child ambitious, and ambition means you cannot love; ambition is anti-love. Ambition needs fight, ambition needs struggle, ambition needs you to use others as a means.
Real spirituality is going through fire. Real spirituality is rebellion against all that is rotten, against all that is past, against all that is being forced on you by others, against all conditionings. Real spirituality is the greatest rebellion there is. It is risky, it is adventurous, it is dangerous. So beware of pseudo spirituality which is always there, available, easily available at the door.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True spirituality involves challenging societal norms and personal conditioning, embracing risk and adventure.
In this quote, Rajneesh emphasizes that authentic spirituality is not a comfortable, easy path but rather a challenging journey that requires individuals to confront and rebel against societal pressures, past conditions, and mediocrity. He cautions against the allure of superficial or 'pseudo' spirituality, which offers a false sense of peace without the depth of transformation that true spiritual growth demands. The quote highlights the transformative and sometimes dangerous nature of genuine spiritual exploration.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational speech about personal growth, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of challenging societal norms.
More from Rajneesh
All quotes →The technique of positive thinking is not a technique that transforms you. It is simply repressing the negative aspects of your personality. It is a method of choice. It cannot help awareness; it goes against awareness. Awareness is always choiceless.
Only those persons who have lived, really lived, are ready, welcoming, receptive, thankful to death. Then death is not the enemy. Then death becomes the fulfillment.
Creativity has two possibilities. One is that it arises out of your silence, love, understanding, your clarity of vision, your intimate friendliness with existence - then creativity is healthy. But if it does not arise out of meditation, out of silence and peace and understanding and love, then there is a danger. It may be arising out of your confused mind. It may be arising out of your insanity.
There is no separate art of life. If you know how to allow poetry, if you know how to allow dance, if you know how to allow love - if you know how to ALLOW, then you know the art of life. In the allowing, in the let-go, in the surrender, is the art of life. How not to be and to let God be - that is the only art of life.
Love is not a relationship, love is a state of being; it has nothing to do with anybody else. One is not "in love", one is love. And of course when one is love, one is in love – but that is an outcome, a by-product, that is not the source. The source is that one is love.
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It saddens me that Christians need to be reminded that awe is owed also to those who disagree with them, who believe otherwise than they do.
This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.
Do I believe in God? Yes I do. When you've had a life like mine, you have to.
How strange to have failed as a social creature—even criminals do not fail that way—they are the law's "Loyal Opposition," so to speak. But the insane are always mere guests on earth, eternal strangers carrying around broken decalogues that they cannot read.
Perhaps the Wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silence that reminds us we live by grace.