Creating One's Own Path

Here's a question:

If you were going to create a new religion, or recreate the religion you already belong to, how would you do it? Where would you start? What would be your focus?

A more particular question: How do you make the transition from solitary magick casting to being in a group? (I'm having problems trying to re-form my personal magick use to that which might be used by more than one person, especially any one other than myself. I don't have a lot of ritual in my magick, because, simply, I don't deem it necessary. I usually just light some candles, sit down, and visit the Spirit.)

Just curious. :)

Osho, on "the ego" (also known as the "self")

What is ego? Ego is a hierarchy that says, "No one is like me." It can feed on humbleness--"Nobody is like me, I am the most humble man."

Don't be in a hurry to drop it, just watch it. The more you watch, the more capable you will become. Suddenly one day, you simply see that it has dropped. And when it drops by itself, only then does it drop. There is no other way. Prematurely you cannot drop it.

It drops just like a dead leaf.

The tree is not doing anything--just a breeze, a situation, and the dead leaf simply drops. The tree is not even aware that the dead leaf has dropped. It makes no noise, it makes no claim--nothing.

The dead leaf simply drops and shatters on the ground, just like that.

When you are mature through understanding, awareness, and you have felt totally that the ego is the cause of all your misery, simply one day you see the dead leaf dropping.

It settles to the ground, dies of its own accord. You have not done anything, so you cannot claim you have dropped it. You see that it has simply disappeared, and then the real center arises.

And that real center is the soul, the self, the god, the truth, or whatsoever you want to call it.

It is nameless, so all names are good.

You can give it any name of your own liking.

--from Beyond the Frontier of the Mind

My own thoughts on the ego

8/17/01, 2:30 a.m.

The missing element is the ego as an independent agent. Ego adulterates a being's energy with its selfish desires. Transcending one's ego necessarily involves moving beyond one's own desires (or, in light of Osho's words, lettting one's desires move beyond *you*). *Very* Eastern, I know. I know next to absolutely nothing about Hinduism, but I know I just said something very much in that vein.

8/21/01, 1:45 p.m.

I feel I'm starting to believe there can be no "mastery" over one's mind. As Jung said, "We can never finally know." I believe we can grow in our understanding of the mind's workings, mechanisms, impulses and instincts. But I feel that we can no more fully control the mind any more than our minds fully control us. We can only strive to understand more, to grok more completely. I do not want to master (and, resultingly, *enslave*) myself. I merely seek a better understanding.