Unitarian Universalism: A Way Of Life

Spirirtual reading discussion group - Maturity: The Responsibility For Being Oneself - Chapter Two - Ignorance or innocence?

Chapter two

Ignorance or innocence?

For growing up, just watch a tree. As the tree grows up its roots are growing down, deeper. There is a balance—the higher the tree goes the deeper the roots will go. You cannot have a tree one hundred and fifty feet high with small roots; they could not support such a huge tree. Maturity means the same as innocence, only with one difference: it is innocence reclaimed, it is innocence recaptured.

In life, growing up means growing deep within yourself—that’s where your roots are.

To me, the first principle of life is meditation. Everything else comes second. And childhood is the best time. As you grow older it means you are coming closer to death, and it becomes more and more difficult to go into meditation.

Meditation means going into your immortality, going into your eternity, going into your godliness. And the child is the most qualified person because he is still unburdened by knowledge, unburdened by religion, unburdened by education, unburdened by all kinds of rubbish. He is innocent.

But unfortunately his innocence is condemned as ignorance. Ignorance and innocence have a similarity, but they are not the same. Ignorance is also a state of not knowing, just as innocence is—but there is a great difference too, which has been overlooked by the whole of humanity up to now. Innocence is not knowledgeable, but it is not desirous of being knowledgeable either. It is utterly content, fulfilled.

A small child has no ambitions, he has no desires. He is so absorbed in the moment—a bird on the wing catches his eye so totally; a butterfly, its beautiful colors, and he is enchanted; the rainbow in the sky … and he cannot conceive that there can be anything more significant, richer than this rainbow. And the night full of stars, stars beyond stars …

Innocence is rich, it is full, it is pure. Ignorance is poor, it is a beggar—it wants this, it wants that, it wants to be knowledgeable, it wants to be respectable, it wants to be wealthy, it wants to be powerful. Ignorance moves on the path of desire. Innocence is a state of desirelessness. But because both are without knowledge, we have remained confused about their natures. We have taken it for granted that they are the same.

Osho. Maturity: The Responsibility of Being Oneself (Osho Insights for a New Way of Living) . St. Martin's Press. Kindle Edition.

Comment:

Osho makes the distinction between ignorance and innocence. Osho says that ignorance is not knowing but wanting to acquire knowledge. Ignorance is grasping, seeking, wanting to acquire the external. Innocence is being content with what is within and resting in wonderment, peace, curiosity, and awe.

Osho says that “Maturity means the same as innocence, only with one difference: it is innocence reclaimed, it is innocence recaptured.”

Unitarian Universalists recapture their innocence when they covenant together to affirm and promote the fourth principle which is the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. This free and responsible search takes one within not without and requires a surrender of one’s will to the will of the Tao, their Higher Power however they understand It.

This is a second article in a series on Maturity: The Responsibility of Being Oneself by Osho.

Spiritual Reading Online Spiritual Reading Book Club - Maturity by Osho, Growing old or growing up?

This is the first article in a series on Osho's book, Maturity: The Responsibility of Being Oneself and comes from the forward.

So first we have to understand what I mean by “life.”

It must not be simply growing old, it must be growing up. And these are two different things. Growing old, any animal is capable of. Growing up is the prerogative of human beings.

Only a few claim the right.

Growing up means moving every moment deeper into the principle of life; it means going farther away from death—not toward death. The deeper you go into life, the more you understand the immortality within you. You are going away from death; a moment comes when you can see that death is nothing but changing clothes, or changing houses, changing forms—nothing dies, nothing can die. Death is the greatest illusion there is.

Osho. Maturity: The Responsibility of Being Oneself (Osho Insights for a New Way of Living) . St. Martin's Press. Kindle Edition.

Comment: Growing old and growing up are two different things. The choice is ours. Many people are in denial and unconscious of fact that they have a choice. Unitarian Universalism requires that people become consciously aware of their choice when it asks them to covenant together with others to affirm and promote the fourth principle to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning.

Unitarian Universalism asks people right up front to take responsibility for becoming oneself by formulating and understanding their own faith, their idea of what Paul Tillich called their "ultimate concern" rather than just going along with what other people expect and require.

Socrates taught that an unexamined life is not worth living. If most people are asked, "What makes you tick?" they become uncomfortable as if they have been put on the spot.

The covenant of Unitarian Universalism asks people to come to awareness of their own state of being. This can be a frightening think initially, but as one searches one finds more peace.

People come to a point in their lives gradually or suddenly that what they have been taught by society is illusional and that there has to be a better way to live their lives.

If we put maturity on a scale of 0 - 10 with 0 being newborn and very immature and 10 being fully self realized, actualized, self-aware, enlightened human beings are mature are you? How mature are the various people that you know well in your life?

My experience of Unitarian Univeralists is that many of them who actually understand and apply the principles in their lives are very mature. How ever I have also met many UUs who are just along for the ride and don't take the faith seriously in terms of working the principles in any kind of meaningful way.

This is article 1 in a series on Maturity: The Reponsibility of Being Oneself