Meditation vs Insanity

My Osho Zen Tarot card today was the one called Suppression. In the book, Master Osho writes:

It is essential to find a way to release whatever tensions and stresses might be building up inside you right now. Beat on a pillow, jump up and down, go out into the wilderness and scream at the empty sky - anything to shake up your energy and allow it to circulate freely. Don't wait for a catastrophe to happen. ....Insanity is nothing but all these suppressions coming to a point where you cannot control them anymore. But madness is acceptable, while meditation is not - and meditation is the only way to make you absolutely sane.

I found this to hold a lot of truth. There have been many times that I have screamed at the empty sky just to "get it out" and let myself get back into harmony. And I cannot tell you how important meditation is to my well being! I can feel when I have not done my meditation for the day. Nothing feels right and everything feels like it goes against the grain of my personality. I get edgy and irritable and generally come across as quite the crusty old fart when I don't even feel that way or want to be that way or even intend it to sound that way.

I remember when I first took up meditation and told a friend at school that she should perhaps give it a try. She said that if she did that she would burn and go to hell. Her mother was a very religious person and pretty much anything that might have even a sniff of being slightly different (even if it was good for you) was considered to be potentially something that would send you to hell. So I asked her if she ever prayed. She said she did every day because her mom insisted on it. I told her what one of my spiritual teachers told me long ago. I told her that prayer is when we talk to God. She understood that. Then I told her that meditation is when we shut our flapping lips and listen to what God has to say to us. She didn't get that. She began quoting some scriptures and I stopped her and told her that she had just proven my point. She was so busy trying to force her dogma onto me that she was not hearing what I was saying. We were not friends after that. I got used to losing friends because I would share with them and they wouldn't handle it very well. So I became much more selective as to what I shared and with whom. It is much safer that way when you are a teenager. I still do that sometimes, but only because I don't wish to make anyone uncomfortable about information they may not want to hear. But as soon as they ask the question....well, let's just say they better hold onto their seats, because the flood gates do open....wide.....very, very wide!

The thing that I just don't get is the general population who believe that we are supposed to have a relationship with God through prayer (flapping our lips) yet we are not supposed to listen to what God says to us. In fact if anyone were to say that God spoke to them, they would risk being locked up in an institution for the insane. Well, if we have a relationship with God, would God be mute???? I don't think so. Omnipotence does not a mute God make. So go ahead and let yourself trust in whatever Creator you may believe in. Even if you don't believe in a Creator Spirit, trust at least in your own inner wisdom voice. The only way to build that relationship is through meditation. I am not saying that prayer is useless by any stretch. I am just saying that we live in a society of lip flappers who have not yet learned how to listen. So try meditation as well as prayer. You never know. You just might find it to be an enriching experience. ;-)

Blessed Be

Trent