THE COMMUNITY OF THE 'MYSTIC HEART'...

I was priviledged to spend the May bank holiday weekend 'working' at Osho Leela, Dorset for the Mystic Heart Festival along with some wonderful friends. My work simply consisted of building and tending the fire for the spiritual firewalk on Saturday night so there was plenty of time to relax and take in the setting for the three days. 

Wow, what an experience and another huge step in mind expansion. This festival was an observation of community living as i'd never seen it before...

Over the last 12 months I have spent time with the Merkaba Community in Portugal, the ISKON community in Spain, the Madhyamaka Kadampa Meditation Centre Buddhist community in York and now the Osho Leela Community in Dorset. Each time it has offered me a beautiful insight into alternative perspectives, routines and norms and in many cases really challenged my thinking.

To me Osho Leela was a community of pure heart felt love merging with hedonism. Taboos and 'Britishness' were totally broken away in the displays of affection from human to human. The safe space to 'be ourselves' was dramatic and profound as men and woman openly broke down in often loud and noisy acts of emotional outpouring during workshops and sessions 

I have never before been held and hugged by so many strangers multiple times a day, I have never before been greeted upon arrival with a full on dance rave, I have never before taken part in a 'dynamic meditation' early in the morning that was so full on with physical outbursts from others around the room (it involved shouting, screaming and flinging cushions around!) that it brought me to tears of emotional overwhelm.

Living the lives of other communities teaches me so much and allows me to observe my own day-to-day world more powerfully than the nature of travelling on trips and holidays and observing from the peripheries. 

Understanding that their way of being is not 'temporary' and that this is what real life is like, makes it all the more real for me. Going back to my 'normal' reminds me that the small (I admit sometimes frustrating) details of everyday life- however permanent, essential, ingrained and routine they may appear, are all within our control to change and shift. Nothing is permanent. They way we live our lives is for the most part base upon nothing more than a series of habits and social conditioning that we always have the choice to step into or away from.

In moments of frustration at myself, at society, at the rut I may feel stuck in, at the 'shoulds' in my decision making... remembering this is all a choice for everyone of us in each and every moment is both an incredibly powerful and humbling reminder.

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