ABOUT THE OSHO ART THERAPIST TRAINING
I found the Osho Art Therapist Training in Amalurra fundamental for those who want to work with people. It’s a combination of experiencing a personal inner journey and relating with others. Supporting people starts from supporting myself. Once I am determined to discover the real me I have good chances to communicate honestly and give a base for trusting relationships. Meditation offers a space of watching whatever it happens inside and outside me. Art is the mirror: visual, direct, shows me immediately where I am and how my emotions are. Painting is so evident, it’s there in front of me, I just have to look. Painting is a declaration of something that was not visible before. It can be a primal-painting where I listen to my child; a selfportrait where I meet my essential identity; a portrait of somebody I don’t know and just have to receive by intuitions; a partner-painting where I have a dialog with the other; a group-painting where I merge in a bigger identity; a darkness-painting where I explore my dark side; a nature-painting where I feel part of the whole.
Meera’s exercises are focused on feeling and sensing the others in order to work with people in a conscious way. I found her approach totally precious and unusual. She doesn’t teach me a technique to apply automatically, rather she teaches me a method of de-automating the methods. To learn that I really have to be in contact with myself, so besides learning how to become an aware therapist I learn how to be myself. I would say: unless I am myself I cannot be a therapist. That’s why I found very important to do this training. By learning to become a therapist I do therapy on me. I really wish people connected with their own spontaneity, but first I have to do it with myself. My ultimate aim is to reach my happiness. Happiness is totally available, it’s already there, I just have to say yes to it.
The training is designed in a way that as well as having joyous moments you also have to face many discomforts. Meera provokes intentionally situations where you encounter others (for example going and paint on top of the somebody else’s painting). At the same time conflict events happens by themselves when you live many days always in contact with people. Meera encourages me to use any situations (accidents, misunderstandings) to analyse myself deeper without escaping. My habit is to live in a hypocritical society so it’s very inconvenient letting go the mask. Osho said ‘live dangerously’. I started to speak my reality. I started to expose. The open-sharings are perfect chances to do that.
By practising a self investigation every moment, I had the insight that as patient I can only heal by myself (I have to do the work), no-one can do it for me. The therapist can only accompany me, cannot substitute me. I want to become a therapist who has this approach. No manipulation, no cheating, only giving courage and support. I also started to apply this understanding in my job with young students. I quit putting myself in a superior level, taking distance to protect me and control them, rather I began to mix with my students to really be there, in a mutual growing process. Meera’s family constellations work gives me a key to understand that we all have the same issues. And we all come from different but similar roots: our parents. Human beings are in the same boat: we might collaborate instead of isolating ourselves and judging each others. By participating in family constellations I learned the respect and gratitude for those who gave me the gift of life and wanted my survival. Now life is in my hand and I will do something good with it.
ABOUT AMALURRA
Amalurra is a unique place. The architecture for activities is especially made for meditation: dome shaped, it has twelve sides and wooden floor and roof. It is built on top of the existing underground room, by volunteers. The roof is going up, embodying the longing to reach the sky.
Being inside I feel my body like a bridge between the two elements: earth and air. That’s why I felt connected with nature while I was there. Moreover you are surrounded by flowers, trees, woods, a river, a tepee, a sweat lodge, a circular fire place, mountains, frogs, the sun, the wind and the Basque refreshing rains. The founders of this commune are women who went beyond conditionings and standard families. They were searching a sense of primitive community and found a new way of growing together. They called this place Amalurra which means Mother Earth and I am very grateful to them for hosting me in such a precious place where I explored my essential nature by feeling welcomed and challenged at the same time. The place is ideal to take distance from daily life stress and dive into oneself. You can experience the powerful dimension of the wild nature and yet the silence for going inward and relax. You find the invitation to relate but also to be on your own.
I believe the Osho Art therapist training cannot have a more suitable location. The people living in Amalurra are very kind and devoted to the commune. Kids dropped to paint with us and adults, besides helping when needed, participated to some meditations and sessions melting with the international group of participants.
by Sahaja
My experience
in Osho Art Therapy Training in Amalurra
Beloved Meera,
In this years the clean meditation it was a important teaching for me. Everything that happens in the reawakening of creativity, about to paint, to cry, to dance, to sweat, to prove love and hate, it’s fixed in every single thing and place around us. It’s fixed on brushes and on the sponges, on the floor, on the wall, on the chairs, on the windows, on the tree and on our body. So it’s up to me a questions: “how can I to show my gratitude about all that I received?”, and the answers comes so quickly: “I can clean every tools that I used and making clean everything that was important for me”. A blackboard to be used and to show new teachings needs to be clean so that we can re-write and re-learn. Many person will use some brushes, some sponges and some color that I used in this training. I felt a sense of gratitude in taking care of what I used. Through the clean meditation, fingerprints of color have been removed but have not been canceled, they were reabsorbed and let it go. If I do not hold back there is an exchange and everything flows. Do not hold back is the secret to being happy. If the seashore held back in itself all the waves that bathe, the seashore will disappear.
With love Ranjita
Email from Govind Gunter Nitschke
Beloved Meera,
thank you for your last newsletters. I loved them and found them attractive as well as helpful; it is important that you interprete real creativity as something not of a single outstanding individual but something which comes from the whole and is the whole.
Therefore, art can be so connecting.
This vision we received from Osho. Also „enlightenment“ is not possible for one single individual alone, forgetting about some individual’s creative painting.
If it happens to you, everyone and everything will take part in it. You cannot have it alone. Lonely Buddhas are no Buddhas.
Gunter Nitschke, Dipl.-Ing, Architect, M.R.T.P.I., Director,
Institute for East Asian Architecture and Urbanism
Letter from Isabella
(Participant of Osho Painting Training in Pune)
Meera I’m gonna miss you sooo much and every one else. I’m gonna miss peeling the paint off my hands and feet and walking around on the paint… painting my arm like a bumble bee was GENIUS!!! Ivy THANK YOU.
I’m gonna miss dancing like a monkey, splashing paint on everyone and doing those crazy exercises… Its Last day and I’m really going to miss everything… opening up about what’s inside, all the times I was the assistant, when I got home and took a nap ;), when I woke up at 8:10 every morning but when I get there its worth it… all the nice people that I meet, even my paint splashed maroon robe, and my hideous nails but it was all worth every second.
I loved every part and I know it will be the last time I will probably see them but I’ll keep in touch :)… Camilla, Prema, Sidika, Atol, Meera, Kreepa, Samadhi, Lovis, Stephanie, Ana, Anna, Gerry…I can’t remember all the names (I’m Sorry!). Oh god has 5 days passed? It seems like 5 hours… But the hours that I spent saying „I don’t want to go now let me sleep!“ I see now that wasn’t very necessary.
I want to keep going but can’t. Stupid stupid school… I learned that I *HAVE* to be myself and I don’t want to be normal… Everybody there is just so ughh does it have to end? I cant leave them now how can I? I will enjoy every possible minute of today and soak it in. I have become a teacher, student, person, and artist. Not only that but I have knowledge many people don’t even dream of learning.
I have an inner child even though I am still one. I am respected and respectful here. I have learned things many people would *never* understand. I am very happy I could be part of the group. Meera is a teacher, a student, a friend, an enemy, a child, an adult, a mediator, a stressful person, she is enlightened and still so dark.
She knows so much but yet so little. She has told me secrets, and things everyone knows. I will miss her funny laughs, her cute bullshits, and when I close my eyes I know she’ll be there talking to me the way she does now. She is the best and I will miss her with all my heart. I will miss every one with all my heart. Everything has to come to an end and my end is today. I feel like something in me is going to die.
I have a lot to gain from this and I will use everything. I love you guys and of all the things that have ended I will miss this the most. I’ll be all alone and I will need you but you will not be able to be there so I’ll be strong and remember what Meera taught us. Well thank you for accepting me into the group when I wasn’t accepting myself. Thank you for making me feel no different than the rest of you.
I probably will remember this for the rest of my life. Just thank you in general! Primal Painting was the best thing I have ever done I just wish I doesn’t have to end… To quote my favorite song “ Have you ever been so lost known the way and still so lost?” Well I was like that till I started here. When I started the group I felt found. I have never been so accepted anywhere else.
This experience will help me when I grow up, I will care more about people and I will see things though a child’s eyes when ever I don’t understand something. As I write this I am in tears just thinking about the end but I know that if I keep looking into the future I can’t enjoy the moment. I feel very connected to everyone. The day when I started to relax more with everything I noticed that it was the second to last day. Most of the people in my class already think I’m a freak but that’s just me.
I am not afraid of being myself now. I can be a critic, and I can be nice. Before I could not even be mean to people I hate. But I have to admit that criticizing people is very hard. But I can get better over the years to come. I’ve come to appreciate everything around me. This really was a learning experience. Thank You Meera and everyone else! I love you guys.
Isabella Branco
P.S.
このグループはそんなに楽しみだった!
私のそれのために…決してとして、大きい喜びはボディおよび心とほしい忘れられていることの私の中心を、外に与えられない、
決して忘れられていない!
私および私の母 決して忘れていない 私の生命で
Meera you are the 最もよい教師!!!
