#both and

[feralchaton]

...both&...

[the-lily-and-rose]

[dinosaur-ears]

When you're trying to break yourself out of binary and all-or-nothing thinking, there are plenty of low-stakes opportunities to challenge your brain.

Ex: I really value native plants and am working toward adding more natives in my gardening. But as I get to know the plants in my yard, I see many that are non-native and even invasive in my region. A lot of us have the urge to treat that as a moral loophole, a guilt-free place to treat the living world with brutality and disdain. Think "kill it with fire" and gleefully stomping on lanternflies. We see them as evil so we can see our hostility as righteous.

But none of these things are evil; none chose to be here. Like me, they are descendants of others who came or were brought here, participating in destruction without their consent.

That doesn't mean I cultivate them; I still replace the Bradford pear with a serviceberry and weed around the wild violets. But as I walk through my yard, I also thank them for what they do in the meantime: thank you grass for cushioning my steps, thank you clover for enriching the soil, thank you dandelions for improving the soil structure, thank you bindweed for decorating my fence, thank you garlic mustard for your spicy leaves, thank you carpet bugle for feeding the pollinators.

[kellymagovern]

Question 1: OSHO, I HEAR YOU SAYING THAT WE ARE ALL LEAVES ON THE SAME TREE, AND THAT ENLIGHTENMENT IS ONLY POSSIBLE WHEN WE REALLY COME TOGETHER. ON THE OTHER HAND, I HEAR YOU SAYING THAT ONLY THE SINGLE INDIVIDUAL CAN FULFILL HIS BEING IN DEEP ALONENESS. I FEEL BOTH OF THESE ARE RIGHT, BUT STILL I HAVE NO REAL UNDERSTANDING OF IT. PLEASE COMMENT.

OSHO: Both are right, but they appear to be contradictory; hence the confusion. On the one hand, I am saying that when you are one with existence, you come to realization — and to be one with existence means you disappear, you are no more. And on the other hand, I am telling you to be yourself, to be authentically your original face; only then can you experience realization.

I can see your dilemma. You feel that they are both right — that is significant to remember — that you FEEL that they are both right, but your mind is not convinced, your thinking is not convinced. Your thinking creates questions: How can they both be right?

Mind functions in an either/or way: either this can be right or its opposite can be right. Both together cannot be right — as far as mind, its logic, its rationality is concerned.

If mind is either/or, then the heart is both/and. The heart has no logic, but a sensitivity, a perceptivity. It can see that not only can both be together; in fact, they are not two. It is just one phenomenon, seen from two different aspects. And there is much more than the two — that's why I say "both/and."

And the heart is always right. If there is a question of choosing between the mind and the heart… because mind is a creation of the society. It has been educated. It has been given to you by the society, not by existence. The heart is unpolluted. It is pure existence: Hence it has a sensitivity. Look from the viewpoint of the heart, and the contradiction starts melting like ice. —Osho "Beyond Psychology," Discourse 2 (April 13, 1986)

[mymidwestheart]

[what-the-wound-remembers]

Franco Anselmi

[codependentbloom]

I can acknowledge the bad. But if I acknowledge the bad, I have to acknowledge the good too.

It's only fair