Recently on facebook.com/silencebook was posted the following quote by Osho:
“Unless a person decides that ‘Whatever the cost, I want just to be myself. Condemned, unaccepted, losing respectability – everything is okay but I cannot pretend anymore to be somebody else’…
“This decision and this declaration – this declaration of freedom, freedom from the weight of the crowd – gives birth to your natural being, to your individuality. Then you don`t need any mask. Then you can be simply yourself, just as you are. And the moment you can be just as you are, there is tremendous peace that passeth understanding.”
I like Osho’s way; he had a brilliant mind and often said to take off the mask and return to the original self, and Ilie Cioara reminds me of Osho.
Ilie Cioara deeply affected the writer of the article I read, and the energy he felt came through in the article, and that prompted me to want to know more about the enlightened Romanian mystic called Ilie Cioara.
He was born in 1916 and died in 2004. He lived at a time in Eastern Europe when the secret police was everywhere, hence, no freedom. And so Ilie Cioara was mostly in complete isolation for twenty years, occupied with his own way of seeking enlightenment – twenty years by himself – exploring, searching, meditating, discovering.
Petrica Verdes whose life was completely changed by the mystic, was the translator of his books. He has much to say at batgap.com/petrica-verdes-ilie-cioara
I’ve taken passages about Ilie Cioara from the THE SEER, SHARING SPIRITUAL AWAKENING to the truth of who we really are, a very interesting website by Peter and Pearl Sumner at peterspearls.com.au/cioara.htm :
“If I had to sum his teaching in one sentence, it would be: when the mind is silent our inner divinity is revealed.
“Witnessing our thoughts is a practice that can be done in any circumstances, throughout our waking hours, 7 days a week. Remembering not to give energy to the mind, knowing that when the mind is resting, a higher energy takes over, and it guides us through flashes of intuitive understanding.
“From the moment you wake up in the morning, until you fall asleep at night, realize you’re not the mind. Just witness it. Whatever you do, whichever the circumstance. You get up, go to the bathroom to brush your teeth — this witnessing continues. You get dressed to go to work, witnessing is there, in the background. You get in the car and start driving, you keep on witnessing.” And this:
” . . . Until the age of 55, when Ilie awakened spiritually, he hadn’t written a single page, and never tried to be a teacher. Because he lived in almost complete isolation, his words have a freshness and a direct simplicity, devoid of any spiritual jargon. Ilie felt the impulse to share his experience and insights using short verses which could give the reader a taste of no-mind. The verses were followed by prose explanations (see example below).
“Most of these writings had to be hidden in the apartment of a friend, until 1990, when the iron curtain fell, so as not to be confiscated by the communist authorities. They describe the practice of ‘Self-knowing’ using all-encompassing Attention. Like Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Eckhart Tolle and Adyashanti etc, his is a simple message of discovering our inner divine nature through the silence of the mind.”
The Silence of the Mind was the first of Ilie Cioara’s books published by o-books.com to read some of the comments on this site is to get a glimpse of the way the book affects its readers.
With the world needing a balance, ourselves included, it’s helpful to understand that, no matter the situation, we human beings are resilient beyond anything we can imagine. The enlightened Romanian mystic, among others, proved this to be true.
It was a lovely, sunny day in Cuenca today. I hope the same for you wherever you are.