Reading is and has always been one of my favorite hobbies. Unfortunately life happens and sometimes, like everything else, hobbies get swept under the rug. Under any other circumstances it only takes me a week or less to finish a book. It took me a month or two to get through this one. But with the holidays passing, I got plenty of down time to catch up on some much needed reading.

My first introduction to Osho’s work was via The Friend Zone podcast. Fran was sharing her love of his work and how his teaching transformed her life. So naturally, I went to eBay and ordered the exact books that she suggested, The Book of Secrets and Emotional Wellness. She also noted that The Book of Secrets was along the lines of an encyclopedia. So I’m treating it like the old bulky brown Britannica books at grandmas house. But Emotional Wellness on the other hand……Whew! It was not for the faint at heart. Allow me to reintroduce its title. Emotional Wellness: Transforming Fear, Anger, and Jealousy Into Creative Energy. Let’s just say that I wasn’t ready.

The book is broken down into three parts:

Part I. Understanding the Nature of Emotions

Part II. Emotional Wellness: Reclaiming Our Inner Harmony

Part III. Watchfulness: The Key to Transformation

I’m not going to lie, most of the book is highlighted. I couldn’t help it. But instead of giving a summary, I’ll share a few takeaways.

For example, somebody insults you and you become angry. You think you are becoming angry, but scientifically speaking the other person’s insult is only functioning as a remote control. The person who has insulted you is managing your behavior. Your anger is in his hands; you are behaving like a puppet

I’d like to think that I’m not nor have I ever been a person that was easily angered. But here lately, it’s been much easier for people, places and things to get on my last damn nerve. But after reading this, “I’m reclaiming my time.” I’m nobody’s puppet.

It is difficult to show your feelings and just be yourself because for thousands of years you have been told to repress your feelings.

It would be excessive yet necessary for me to quote this more than once. This is something that I’ve been working on unpacking. Repressing my feelings. I’ve spent the bulk of my life doing this. Kudos to those that have never had to. I’ve always had other people (especially lovers) telling me and making me feel that my feelings were invalid. Letting go of this thought pattern has proven to be quite the challenge. To make things even more complicated, I coupled the process with finding the balance of learning exactly who I can express my feelings to. There are very few people that can handle these conversations. It’s been much easier to write them down.

You get identified with anything. People get identified with persons and then they create misery for themselves. They get identified with things, then they get miserable if that thing is missing.

The absence or presence of people, places and things should have little to nothing to do with my happiness. Somewhere along the way I forgot that part. Osho reminded me of this. FOMO is real. FOMO will ruin you if you allow it *doubechecks bank account and other side of my bed

Life is dialectical, not logical. It is a movement between polarities. Those polarities are not really opposite, although they look opposite;they are complementaries also. Hate and love are not two things; in fact it is one thing, lovehate. It is one thing, birthdeath; it is one thing, daynight, it is one thing, manwoman. It is like the peaks of the Himalayas and the valleys. The peaks cannot exist without the valleys, and the valleys cannot exist without the peaks- they are together. And this paradox will be found on every plane, everywhere.

Until I read this book, I wasn’t fully aware of how valuable the polarities were. Not just concerning relationships but with all things. But it all made perfect sense……