Wilhelm Reich spoke volumes on it, the Osho Active Meditations help
dissolve it: Body Armoring.
What to do when pain comes up as part of that dissolution of blocks? The
first few days of active meditation tend to tighten muscles, causing pain
everywhere. Is there any way to get over that?


Go on doing it! You will get over it.

The reasons are obvious. There are two reasons. First, it is a
vigorous exercise and your body has to get attuned to it. So for three or
four days you will feel that the whole body is aching. With any new exercise
it will happen. But after four days you will get over it and your body will
feel stronger than ever.

But this is not very basic. The basic thing goes deeper, and the basic
thing is what modern psychologists have come to know. Your body is not
simply physical. In your body, in your muscles, in the structure of your
body, many other things have entered through suppressions. If you suppress
anger, the poison goes into the body. It goes into the muscles, it goes into
the blood. If you suppress anything, it is not only a mental thing, it is
also physical because you are not really divided. You are not body and mind;
you are bodymind - psychosomatic. You are both together. So whatsoever is
done with your body reaches the mind and whatsoever is done with the mind
reaches the body, as body and mind are two ends of the same entity.

For instance, if you get angry what happens to the body? Whenever you
get angry certain poisons are released into the blood. Without those poisons
you will not get mad enough to be angry. You have particular glands in the
body, and those glands release certain chemicals. Now this is scientific,
this is not just a philosophy. Your blood becomes poisoned.

That is why, when you are angry, you can do something which you cannot
do ordinarily...because you are mad. You can push a big rock: you cannot do
it ordinarily. You cannot even believe afterwards that you could have pushed
this rock or thrown it or lifted it. When you are back to normal again, you
will not be capable of lifting it again because you are not the same.
Particular chemicals were circulating in the blood. You were in an emergency
condition; your total energy was brought to be active.

But when an animal gets angry, he gets angry. He has no morality about
it, no teaching about it. He simply gets angry and the anger is released.
When you get angry, you get angry in a way similar to any animal. But then
there is society, morality, etiquette, and thousands of things. You have to
push the anger down. You have to show that you are not angry; you have to
smile - a painted smile! You have to create a smile, and you push the anger
down. What is happening to the body? The body was ready to fight - either to
fight or to fly, to escape from the danger, either to face it or escape from
it. The body was ready to do something: anger is just a readiness to do
something. The body was going to be violent, aggressive.

If you could be violent and aggressive, then the energy would be
released. But you cannot be - it is not convenient, so you push it down.
Then what will happen to all those muscles which were ready to be
aggressive? They will become crippled. The energy pushes them to be
aggressive, and you push them backwards not to be aggressive. There will be
a conflict. In your muscles, in your blood, in your body tissues there will
be conflict. They are ready to express something and you are pushing them
not to express. You are suppressing them. Then your body becomes crippled.

This happens with every emotion. And this goes on day after day for
years. Then your body becomes crippled all over. All the nerves become
crippled. They are not flowing, they are not liquid, they are not alive.
They have become dead, they have become poisoned. And they have all become
entangled. They are not natural.

Look at any animal and see the grace of the body. What happens to the
human body? Why is it not so graceful? Why? Every animal is so graceful: why
is the human body not so graceful? What has happened to it? You have done
something with it: you have crushed it and the natural spontaneity of its
flow has gone. It has become stagnant. In every part of your body there is
poison. In every muscle of your body there is suppressed anger, suppressed
sexuality, suppressed greed and everything - suppressed jealousy and
hatred.... Everything is suppressed there. Your body is really diseased.

So when you start meditating, all these poisons will be released. And
wherever the body has become stagnant, it will have to melt, it will become
liquid again. And this is a great effort. After forty years of living in a
wrong way, then suddenly meditating...the whole body is in an upheaval. You
will feel aching all over the body. But this aching is good, and you have to
welcome it. Allow the body to become again a flow. Again it will become
graceful and childlike; again you will gain the aliveness. But before that
aliveness comes to you the dead parts have to be straightened, and this is
going to be a little painful.

Psychologists say that we have created an armor around the body and
that armor is the problem. If you are allowed total expression when you get
angry what will you do? When you get angry, you start crushing your teeth
together; you want to do something with your nails and with your hands,
because that's how your animal heritage will have it. You want to do
something with your hands, to destroy something.

If you don't do anything your fingers will become crippled; they will
lose the grace, the beauty. They will not be alive limbs. And the poison is
there. So when you shake hands with someone, really there is no touch, no
life, because your hands are dead.

You can feel this. Touch a small child's hand - a subtle difference is
there. When the child really gives you his hand...if he is not giving, then
it is alright, he will withdraw it. He will not give you a dead hand, he
will simply withdraw. But if he wants to give you his hand, then you will
feel that his hand is as if it is melting into your hand. The warmth, the
flow...as if the whole child has come to the hand. The very touch, and he
expresses all the love that it is possible to express.

But the same child when grown up will shake hands as if a hand is just
a dead instrument. He will not come in it, he will not flow through it. This
has happened because there are blocks.

Anger is blocked...really, before your hand becomes alive again to
express love, it will have to pass through agony, it will have to pass
through a deep expression of anger. If the anger is not released, that anger
is blocking and love cannot come out of it.

Your whole body has become blocked, not only your hands. So you can
embrace someone, you can take someone near your chest, but that is not
synonymous with taking someone near your heart. These are two different
things. You can take someone near your chest: this is a physical phenomenon.
But if you have an armor around your heart, a blocking of emotions, then the
person remains as distant as he ever was; no intimacy is possible. But if
you really take a person near, and there is no armor, no wall between you
and the person, then the heart will melt into the other. There will be a
meeting, a communion.

Your body has to release many poisons. You have become toxic, and you
will have pain because those poisons have settled down. Now I am creating a
chaos again. This meditation is to create chaos within you so that you can
be rearranged, so that a new arrangement becomes possible. You must be
destroyed as you are, only then can the new be born. As you are, you have
gone totally wrong. You have to be destroyed and only then can something new
be created. There will be pain, but this pain is worthwhile.

So go on doing the meditation and allow the body to have pain. Allow
the body not to resist; allow the body to move into this agony. This agony
comes from your past but it will go. If you are ready it will go. And when
it goes, then for the first time you will have a body. Right now you have
only an imprisonment, a capsule, dead. You are encapsulated; you do not have
an agile, alive body. Even animals have more beautiful, more alive bodies
than you.

By the way, that is why we have become so obsessed with clothes -
because the body is not worth showing. We have become so obsessed with
clothes! Whenever you stand naked you will see what you have done to your
body. Clothes go on hiding your body from you.

This has been my experience through so many meditation camps: if some
people become naked in the camps, really only these people are the ones who
have beautiful bodies; thus, they are not afraid. Those who have ugly bodies
come and they complain, and they say, "This is not good, people going nude!"
Their fear is natural. They are not really afraid of others going nude, they
are afraid of themselves; they cannot face their own bodies.

This disease is a vicious circle, because if you do not have a live
body you want to hide it, and when you hide it, it becomes more and more
dead - because then there is no need to be alert about its being alive.

Through centuries of clothing we have lost touch with our own bodies.
If your head is cut off and you encounter your own body without a head, I am
sure you will not be able to recognize that this is your body or will you be
able to recognize it? You will not be able to recognize it because you are
not even acquainted with your own body. You do not have any feeling about
it; you are simply living in it without caring about it.

We have done much violence to our bodies. So in this chaotic
meditation I am forcing your bodies to be alive again. Many blocks will be
broken; many settled things will become unsettled again; many systems will
become liquid again. There will be pain, but welcome it. It is a blessing
and you will come over it. Continue! There is no need to think what to do.
You simply continue the meditation. I have seen hundreds and hundreds of
people passing through the same process. Within a few days the pain is gone.
And when the pain is gone, you will have a subtle joy around your body.

cannot have it right now because the pain is there. You may know it or
you may not know it but the pain is there all over your body. You have
simply become unconscious about it because it has always been with you.
Whatsoever is always there, you become unconscious about. Through meditation
you will become conscious and then the mind will say, "Don't do this; the
whole body is aching." Do not listen to the mind. Simply go on doing it.

Within a certain period the pain will be thrown out. And when the pain
is thrown out, when your body has again become receptive and there is no
block, no poisons around it, you will always have a subtle feeling of joy
wrapped around you. Whatsoever you are doing or not doing, you will always
feel a subtle vibration of joy around your body.

Really, joy only means that your body is in a symphony, nothing else -
that your body is in a musical rhythm, nothing else. Joy is not pleasure;
pleasure has to be derived from something else. Joy is just to be yourself -
alive, fully vibrant, vital. A feeling of a subtle music around your body
and within your body, a symphony. That is joy. You can be joyful when your
body is flowing, when it is a riverlike flow.

It will come but you will have to pass through suffering, through
pain. That is part of your destiny because you have created it. But it goes.
If you do not stop in the middle, it goes. If you stop in the middle, then
the old settlement will be there again. Within four or five days you will
feel okay - just the old, as you have always been. Be aware of that
okayness.


The Supreme Doctrine

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