A real education will not teach you to compete; it will teach you to cooperate. It will not teach you to fight and come first. It will teach you to be creative, to be loving, to be blissful, without comparing yourself to others. It will not teach you that you can be happy only when you are the first—that is sheer nonsense. You can’t be happy just by being first, and in trying to be first you go through such misery that by the time you become the first you are habituated to misery.

By the time you become the president or the prime minister of a country you have gone through such misery that now misery is your second nature. You don’t know now any other way to exist; you remain miserable. Tension has become ingrained; anxiety has become your way of life. You don’t know any other way; this is your very lifestyle. So even though you have become the first, you remain cautious, anxious, afraid. It does not change your inner quality at all.

A real education will not teach you to be the first. It will tell you to enjoy whatever you are doing, not for the result, but for the act itself. Just like a painter or a dancer or a musician…

There’s no virtue in competition

You can paint in two ways. You can paint to compete with other painters; you want to be the greatest painter in the world, you want to be a Picasso or a Van Gogh. Then your painting will be second-rate, because your mind is not interested in painting itself; it is interested in being the first, the greatest painter in the world. You are not going deep into the art of painting. You are not enjoying it, you are only using it as a stepping-stone.

You are on an ego trip, and the problem is that to really be a painter, you have to drop the ego completely. To really be a painter, the ego has to be put aside. Only then can existence flow through you. Only then can your hands and your fingers and your brush be used as vehicles. Only then can something of superb beauty be born.

Real beauty is never created by you but only through you. Existence flows; you become only a passage. You allow it to happen, that’s all; you don’t hinder it.

But if you are too interested in the result, the ultimate result—that you have to become famous, that you have to be the best painter in the world, that you have to defeat all other painters hitherto—then your interest is not in painting; painting is secondary. And of course, with a secondary interest in painting you can’t paint something original; it will be ordinary.

Ego cannot bring anything extraordinary into the world; the extraordinary comes only through egolessness. And so is the case with the musician and the dancer. So is the case with everybody.

Let go and be in the flow

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says: Don’t think of the result at all. It is a message of tremendous beauty and significance and truth. Don’t think of the result at all. Just do what you are doing with your totality. Get lost in it, lose the doer in the doing. Don’t “be”– let your creative energies flow unhindered. That’s why he said to Arjuna: “Don’t escape from the war… because I can see this escape is just an ego trip. The way you are talking simply shows that you are calculating, you are thinking that by escaping from the war you will become a great saint. Rather than surrendering to the whole, you are taking yourself too seriously– as if there will be no war if you are not there.”

Krishna says to Arjuna, “Just be in a state of let-go. Say to existence, ‘Use me in whatever way you want to use me. I am available, unconditionally available.’ Then whatsoever happens through you will have a great authenticity about it. It will have intensity, it will have depth. It will have the impact of the eternal on it.”

Jesus says: Remember, those who are first in this world will be the last in the kingdom of God, and those who are the last will be the first. He has given you the fundamental law– he has given you the inexhaustible, eternal law: Stop trying to be the first. But remember one thing, which is very much possible, because the mind is so cunning it can distort every truth. You can start trying to be the last– but then you miss the whole point. Then another competition starts: “I have to be the last”– and if somebody else says, “I am the last,” then the struggle, the conflict, begins again.

I have heard a Sufi parable:

A great emperor, Nadirshah, was praying. It was early morning; the sun had not yet risen, it was still dark. Nadirshah was about to start the conquest of a new country, and of course he was praying to God for his blessings, to be victorious. He was saying to God, “I am nobody. I am just a servant– a servant of your servants. Bless me. I am going on your behalf, this is your victory. But I am a nobody, remember. I am just a servant of your servants.”

A priest was also by his side, helping him in prayer, functioning as a mediator between him and God. And then suddenly they heard another voice in the darkness. A beggar of the town was also praying, and he was saying to God, “I am nobody, a servant of your servants.”

The king said, “Look at this beggar! He is a beggar and saying to God that he is nobody! Stop this nonsense! Who are you to say your are nobody? I am nobody, and nobody else can claim this. I am the servant of God’s servants– who are you to say that you are the servant of his servants?”

Now you see? The competition is still there, the same competition, the same stupidity. Nothing has changed. The same calculation: “I have to be the last. Nobody else can be allowed to be the last.” The mind can go on playing such games on you if you are not very understanding, if you are not very intelligent.

To be competitive is ugly, violent

Never try to be happy at the expense of another man’s happiness. That is ugly, inhuman. That is violence in the true sense. If you think you become a saint by condemning others as sinners, your saintliness is nothing but a new ego trip. If you think you are holy because you are trying to prove others unholy… That’s what your holy people are doing. They go on bragging about their holiness, saintliness. Go to your so-called saints and look into their eyes. They have such condemnation for you! They are saying that you are all bound for hell; they go on condemning everybody. Listen to their sermons; all their sermons are condemnatory.

And of course you listen silently to their condemnations because you know that you have made many mistakes in your life, errors in your life. And they have condemned everything– so it is impossible to feel that you can be good. You love food, you are a sinner. You don’t get up early in the morning, you are a sinner; you don’t go to bed early in the evening, you are a sinner. They have arranged everything in such a way that it is very difficult not to be a sinner.

Yes, they are not sinners. They go early to bed and they get up early in the morning… in fact, they have nothing else to do! They never commit any mistakes because they never do anything. They are just sitting there almost dead. But if you do something, of course, how can you be holy? Hence for centuries the holy man has been renouncing the world and escaping from the world, because to be in the world and be holy seems to be impossible.

My whole approach is that unless you are in the world, your holiness is of no value at all. Be in the world and be holy! We have to define holiness in a totally different way. Don’t live at the expense of others’ pleasures– that is holiness. Don’t destroy others’ happiness, help others to be happy– that is holiness. Create the climate in which everybody can have a little joy.

The post To be competitive is to be stupid, says Osho appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

It’s a bit like in childhood when we feel pain in our gums before the growth of a tooth. As children, we are not aware of what is happening and so we resent the pain and cry from it—we want the pain to end. But the elders around us know that there is a reason behind the pain and they don’t panic. This pain is not to be suppressed or avoided because at the other end of the pain is growth and development.

Life begins with pain. The birth of a baby is painful for the mother and the baby. Out of this pain springs forth the breath of life and a wonderful new relationship. But did you know that babies feel pain even before they are born? Such is our intrinsic relationship with pain.

The wise know that all pain, physical or emotional, is always accompanied with self-growth, even though it may not be apparent to us. All real growth arises out of suffering and pain—courage comes from experiencing fear, compassion comes from knowing apathy, success comes from understanding failure.

It’s in the middle of our greatest challenges that we’re also given the opportunity for our highest growth, our grandest glory

Is Pain Your Enemy?

I like the way how Osho explains that Ram and Ravan are actually two sides of the same coin. Take Ravan out of Ramayan, and suddenly Ram’s greatness shrinks. The purpose of Ravan’s existence was to bring out the innate glory of Ram. So is the case with all suffering. Its purpose is served only if we are present to it, instead of escaping it.

But this goes against what we have come to believe. We have learnt that pain is our enemy—and we must run away from it. We have become conditioned to view pain suspiciously, to avoid it at any cost, to suppress it, and scorn at it, not realizing that life uses pain in its own ingenious ways.

Indeed, it’s in the middle of our greatest challenges that we’re also given the opportunity for our highest growth, our grandest glory. From this perspective, suffering can be viewed as our ally, who has assumed an unpleasant role only to help us reach our own objective of self-awareness. We can view crisis, turmoil, and grief as opportunities for growth.

Pain is not a curse. It’s a part of the natural ebb and flow of life itself, just like pleasure

Becoming Intimate With Pain

To allow this growth, we have to become familiar with the suffering, we have to know it intimately. Pema Chödrön, a Buddhist meditation master, writes in her bestselling book When Things Fall Apart, “To stay with that shakiness—to stay with that broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge—that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic—this is the spiritual path.”

Also read » Pain: A blessing, not a curse

Pain is not a curse. It’s a part of the natural ebb and flow of life itself, just like pleasure. We have to learn not to deaden our pain or ignore it. We have to learn to allow it and view it with compassion instead of disdain. It is difficult to do—but the promise it carries within it is of authentic freedom and self-discovery.

The post Does Pain Have a Purpose? appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

I like to think of My Ego as a misery factory—a fairly large one with several misery machines, which run quietly and have great capacity to produce misery and insanity. Its products are the psychological equivalent of intoxicants like alcohol and drugs. Under their influence, I lose all perspective. The products include judgement, righteousness, comparison, entitlement, anxiety, self-pity, envy, fear [psychological, not instinctive], hatred, possessiveness, anger, guilt, resentment, inferiority complex, revenge and many more.

The misery factory works 24/7 and its raw material is the collective unconsciousness of all humanity, which is free and available in ample quantity. Its power supply is imagination. The factory has received funding from a society that promotes the idea of separation, conflict and one-upmanship. No wonder nearly all fellow humans also have their own ego factories.

My Ego is that part of my self that is completely identified with the ideas of separation from others

Annihilation ahead?

The chief consumer of the products of My Ego is the conditioned mind, which has been led to believe that these products are needed for its survival. But I know that this is a lie. Far from being necessary, these products are highly toxic and act like slow poison that will ultimately annihilate its owner and the entire human species.

Sometimes I wonder if complete lockout is the only solution. Perhaps management buyout is a better idea—that way I can take control of the factory and change its core products. What if I found a way to convert the machines into producing bliss instead of misery? What if they start manufacturing life-enhancing substances—tolerance, forgiveness, courage, peace, understanding, respect, freedom, happiness and love?

An important breakthrough

I figure that one way to make the machines stop making misery and start making bliss is to replace the basic raw material—use consciousness in place of unconsciousness. The trouble is that consciousness is in short supply, its only source being a high degree of presence. I have been experimenting with this for a while and though my research is far from over I am happy to report that I have had an important breakthrough. I have found that I can successfully cut off the factory’s power supply using a phenomenon called meditation.

What if I found a way to convert the machines into producing bliss instead of misery?

This is how it works: While meditating, my overactive imagination stops and My Ego comes to a grinding halt. But this phase doesn’t last and as soon as my imagination returns, the factory starts again and the insanity returns. Still, this has been a useful discovery, because it allows me time and space to cultivate the art of presence which, in turn, helps me produce the raw material of consciousness required for bliss in ample quantities.

The more I meditate, the easier it gets to stay present, yielding more and more consciousness, until one day meditation won’t be required—I will be simply present. The misery machines will then finally become transformed into bliss machines and My Ego will be transmuted into My Ecstasy, a factory I wouldn’t mind owning!

This was first published in the April 2015 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

The post Meet my misery machines appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

So always look at what happens when you do something: if you become peaceful or restful, it is right. This is the criterion; nothing else is the criterion. What is right for you may not be right for somebody else; remember that too. Because what is easy for you may not be easy for somebody else; something else may be easy for him. So there can be no universal law about it. Every individual has to work it out for himself.

Two Reasons Why We Choose Unhappiness

This is one of the most complex human problems. It has to be considered very deeply, and it is not theoretical—it concerns you. This is how everybody is behaving—always choosing the wrong way, always choosing to be sad, depressed, miserable. There must be profound reasons for it, and there are.

1. Being miserable feeds the ego

First, the way human beings are brought up plays a very definite role. If you are unhappy, you gain something from it. If you are happy, you always lose. From the very beginning, an alert child senses this distinction.

Whenever he is unhappy, everybody is sympathetic toward him. Everybody tries to be loving toward him. And even more than that, whenever he is unhappy, everybody is attentive toward him, he gains attention. Attention works like food for the ego, a very alcoholic stimulant. It gives you energy; you feel you are somebody. Hence so much need, so much desire to get attention.

If everybody is looking at you, you become important. If nobody is looking at you, you feel as if you are not there, you are a non-being.

The ego exists in relationship. The more people pay attention to you, the more you gain ego. If nobody looks at you, the ego dissolves. If everybody has completely forgotten you, how can the ego exist? Hence the need for societies, associations, clubs. All over the world clubs exist—Rotary, Lions, Masonic Lodges—millions of clubs and societies. These societies and clubs exist only to give attention to people who cannot get attention in other ways.

From the very beginning a child learns the politics: look miserable, then you get sympathy, then everybody is attentive. Look ill—you become important. An ill child becomes dictatorial; the whole family has to follow him—whatever he says is the rule. When he is happy, nobody listens to him. When he is healthy, nobody cares about him. From the very beginning we start choosing the miserable, the sad, the pessimistic, the darker side of life. That’s one reality.

2. Happiness attracts jealousy

A second thing related to it is: whenever you are happy, whenever you are joyful, whenever you feel ecstatic and blissful, everybody is jealous of you. Jealousy means that everybody is antagonistic, nobody is friendly; at that moment, everybody is an enemy.

So you have learned not to be so ecstatic that everybody becomes inimical toward you—not to show your bliss, not to laugh.

Look at people when they laugh. They laugh very calculatingly. It is not a belly-laugh, it is not coming from the very depth of their being. They first look at you, then they judge… and then they laugh. And they laugh to a particular extent, the extent you will tolerate, the extent where nobody will become jealous.

Even our smiles are political. Laughter has disappeared, bliss has become absolutely unknown, and to be ecstatic is almost impossible because it is not allowed. If you are miserable, nobody will think you are mad. If you are ecstatic and dancing, everybody will think you are mad. Dance is rejected, singing is not accepted. A blissful man—we think something has gone wrong if we see one.

Misery Is Accepted as Normal; Bliss Is Viewed as Nonsense

What type of society is this? If someone is miserable, everything is okay; he fits because the whole society is miserable, more or less. He is a member, he belongs to us: If somebody becomes ecstatic, we think he has gone berserk, insane. He doesn’t belong to us—and we feel jealous.

Because of jealousy, we condemn him and we try in every way to put him back to his old state. We call that old state normality. Psychoanalysts will help, psychiatrists will help to bring that man to the normal misery.

Society cannot allow ecstasy. Ecstasy is the greatest revolution. If people become ecstatic, the whole society will have to change, because this society is based on misery.

Signs That You Are Choosing Misery

If people are blissful, you cannot lead them to war—to Vietnam, or to Egypt, or to Israel. No. Someone who is blissful will just laugh and say: This is nonsense!

If people are blissful, you cannot make them obsessed with money. They will not waste their whole lives just accumulating money. It will look like madness to them that a person is destroying his whole life, just exchanging his life for dead money. And the money will be there when he is dead. This is absolute madness! But this madness can not be seen unless you are ecstatic.

If people are ecstatic, then the whole pattern of this society will have to change. This society exists on misery. Misery is a great investment for this society. So we bring up children…  from the very beginning, we create a leaning toward misery. That’s why they always choose misery.

In the morning, everybody has a choice. And not only in the morning, every moment there is a choice to be miserable or to be happy. You always choose to be miserable because there is an investment. Because that has become a habit, a pattern; you have always done that. You have become efficient at doing it; it has become a track. The moment your mind has to choose, it immediately flows toward misery.

Misery seems to be downhill; ecstasy seems to be uphill. Ecstasy looks very difficult to reach—but it is not so. The real thing is quite the opposite: Nobody wants to be miserable and everybody IS miserable.

Education, culture, parents, teachers-they have done a great job. They have made miserable creatures out of ecstatic creators. Every child is born ecstatic. Every child is born a god. And every man dies a madman.

This is your whole work-how to regain childhood, how to reclaim it. If you can become a child again, then there is no misery. I don’t mean that for a child there are no moments of misery-there are. But still there is no misery. Try to understand this.

A child can become miserable, intensely unhappy in a moment, but he is so total in that unhappiness, he is so one with that unhappiness, that there is no division. The child separate from unhappiness does not exist. The child is unhappiness—he is so involved in it. And when you become one with unhappiness If you become so one with it, even that has a beauty of its own.

So look at a child—an unspoilt child, I mean. If he is angry, then his whole energy becomes anger; nothing is reserved. He has moved and become anger; there is nobody manipulating and controlling the anger. There is no mind. And then see the beauty, the flowering of anger.

The child never looks ugly—even in anger he looks beautiful. He just looks more intense, more vital, more alive-a volcano ready to erupt. Such a small child, such a great energy, such an atomic being-with the whole universe to explode.

And after this anger the child will be silent. After this anger the child will be very peaceful. After this anger the child will relax. We may think it is very miserable to be in that anger, but the child is not miserable—he has enjoyed it.

If you become one with anything you become blissful. If you separate yourself from anything, even if it is happiness, you will become miserable.

So this is the key. To be separate as an ego is the base of all misery; to be one, to be flowing, with whatever life brings to you, to be in it so intensely, so totally, that you are no more, you are lost, then everything is blissful.

Misery or Happiness—The Choice Is Yours

The choice is there, but you have even become unaware of the choice. You simply choose it automatically. There is no choice left.

Become alert. Each moment when you are choosing to be miserable remember: this is your choice. Even this mindfulness will help, the alertness that this is my choice and I am responsible, and this is what I am doing to myself. Immediately you will feel a difference. The quality of mind will have changed. It will be easier for you to move towards happiness.

And once you know that this is your choice, then the whole thing has become a game. Then if you love to be miserable, be miserable, but remember that this is your choice and don’t complain. There is nobody else responsible. This is your drama. If you like it this way, if you like the miserable way, if you want to pass through life in misery, then this is your choice. You are playing it. Play it well!

Don’t go and ask people how not to be miserable. That is absurd. Don’t go and ask masters and gurus how to be happy. The so-called gurus exist because you are foolish. You create the misery, and then you go and ask others how to uncreate it. And you will go on creating misery because you are not alert to what you are doing. From this very moment try, try to be happy and blissful.

Excerpted from Body Mind Balancing, Courtesy: OSHO International Foundation

The post Osho Explains Why We Choose Misery Instead of Bliss appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

This is how everybody is behaving…always choosing the wrong, always choosing the sad, the depressed, the miserable. There must be profound reasons for it, and there are.

The first thing: The way human beings are brought up plays a definite role in it. If you are unhappy, you always gain something from it. If you are happy, you always lose. From the very beginning, an alert child starts feeling the distinction.

Whenever he is unhappy, everybody is sympathetic towards him, he gains sympathy. Everybody tries to be loving towards him, he gains love. And even more than that: whenever he is unhappy, everybody is attentive towards him, he gains attention.

Attention works like food for the ego, a very alcoholic stimulant. It gives you energy; you feel you are somebody. Hence there is so much need, so much desire to get attention.

If everybody is looking at you, you become important. If nobody is looking at you, you feel as if you are not there, you are no more, you are a non-being. People looking at you, people caring about you, gives you energy.

The more people pay attention to you, the more you gain ego. If nobody looks at you, the ego dissolves. If everybody has completely forgotten you, how can the ego exist? How can you feel that you are?

Hence the need for societies, associations, clubs. These societies and clubs exist only to give attention to people who cannot get attention in other ways.

It is difficult to become a president of a country. It is difficult to become a mayor of a corporation. It is easier to become the president of a club; then a particular group gives you attention. You are very important—doing nothing! The president goes on changing; one this year, another next year.

Everybody gets attention. It is a mutual arrangement, and everybody feels important.From the very beginning the child learns the politics. The politics are: look miserable, then you get sympathy, then everybody is attentive.

Look ill; you become important. An ill child becomes dictatorial; the whole family has to follow him—whatsoever he says is the rule.

When he is happy, nobody listens to him. When he is healthy, nobody cares about him. When he is perfect, nobody is attentive. From the very beginning we start choosing the miserable, the sad, the pessimistic… the darker side of life. That’s one thing.

A second thing related to it is: whenever you are happy, whenever you are joyful, whenever you feel ecstatic and blissful, everybody is jealous of you. Jealousy means that everybody is antagonistic, nobody is friendly; at that moment everybody is an enemy. So you have learnt not to be so ecstatic that everybody becomes inimical towards you —not to show your bliss, not to laugh.

Look at people when they laugh. They laugh very calculatingly. It is not a belly laugh; it is not coming from the depth of their being. They first look at you, then they judge…and then they laugh.

And they laugh to a particular extent, to the extent you will tolerate, to the extent which will not be taken amiss, the extent where nobody will become jealous.

Even our smiles are political. Laughter has disappeared; bliss has become absolutely unknown, and to be ecstatic is almost impossible because it is not allowed.

If you are miserable, nobody will think you are mad. If you are ecstatic and dancing, everybody will think you are mad. Dance is rejected, singing is not accepted. A blissful man…we think something has gone wrong.

What type of society is this? If someone is miserable, everything is okay; he fits because the whole society is miserable, more or less. He is a member; he belongs to us. If somebody becomes ecstatic we think he has gone berserk, insane. He doesn’t belong to us…and we feel jealous.

Because of jealousy we condemn him. Because of jealousy we will try in every way to put him back to his old state. We call that old state normality. Psychoanalysts will help, psychiatrists will help to bring that man to the normal misery.

In the West, the whole society is turning against psychedelics [drugs that alter perception/cognition]. The law, the state, the government, the legal experts, the high courts, the legislators, priests, popes…everybody is turning against them.

They are not really against psychedelics; they are against people being ecstatic. They are not against alcohol, they are not against other things which are drugs, but they are against psychedelics because the substances can create a chemical change in you.

And the old crust that the society has created around you, the imprisonment in misery, can be broken. You can come out of it, even for a few moments, and be ecstatic.

Society cannot allow ecstasy. Ecstasy is the greatest revolution. I repeat it: ecstasy is the greatest revolution. If people become ecstatic, the whole society will have to change, because this society is based on misery.

If people are blissful, you cannot lead them to war—to Vietnam, or to Egypt, or to Israel. No. Someone who is blissful will just laugh and say: This is nonsense!

If people are blissful you cannot make them obsessed with money. They will not waste their whole lives just accumulating money. It will look like madness to them that a person is destroying his whole life, just exchanging his life for dead money, dying and accumulating money.

And the money will be there when he is dead. This is absolute madness! But this madness cannot be seen unless you are ecstatic. If people are ecstatic, the whole pattern of this society will have to change.

This society exists on misery. Misery is a great investment for this society. So we bring up children…from the very beginning we create a leaning towards misery. That’s why they always choose misery.

In the morning for everybody there is a choice. And not only in the morning, every moment there is a choice to be miserable or to be happy. You always choose to be miserable because there is an investment.

You always choose to be miserable because that has become a habit, a pattern, you have always done that. You have become efficient at doing it, it has become a track. The moment your mind has to choose, it immediately flows towards misery.

Misery seems to be downhill, ecstasy seems to be uphill. Ecstasy looks very difficult to reach but it is not so. The real thing is quite the opposite: ecstasy is downhill, misery is uphill.

Misery is a difficult thing to achieve, but you have achieved it, you have done the impossible…because misery is so anti-nature. Nobody wants to be miserable and everybody is miserable.

Society has done a great job. Education, culture, and the culturing agencies, parents, teachers—they have done a great job. They have made miserable creatures out of ecstatic creators. Every child is born ecstatic. Every child is born a god. And every man dies a madman.

Unless you recover, unless you reclaim your childhood, you will not be able to become the white clouds I am talking about. This is the whole work for you, the whole sadhana—how to regain childhood, how to reclaim it. If you can become children again, then there is no misery.

I don’t mean that for a child there are no moments of misery—there are. But still there is no misery. Try to understand this.

A child can become miserable, he can be unhappy, intensely unhappy in a moment, but he is so total in that unhappiness, he is so one with that unhappiness that there is no division. The child separate from unhappiness is not there. The child is not looking at his unhappiness separate, divided.

The child is unhappiness—he is so involved in it. When you become one with unhappiness, unhappiness is not unhappiness. If you become so one with it, even that has a beauty of its own.

So look at a child—an unspoilt child, I mean. If he is angry, then his whole energy becomes anger; nothing is left behind, no holding back. There is nobody manipulating and controlling it. There is no mind. The child has become anger; he is not angry, he has become the anger.

And then see the beauty, the flowering of anger. The child never looks ugly; even in anger he looks beautiful. He just looks more intense, more vital, more alive…a volcano ready to erupt. Such a small child, such a great energy, such an atomic being—with the whole universe to explode!

And after this anger, the child will be silent. After this anger the child will be very peaceful. After this anger the child will relax. We may think it is miserable to be in that anger but the child is not miserable—he has enjoyed it.

If you become one with anything, you become blissful. If you separate yourself from anything, even if it is happiness, you will become miserable.

So this is the key. To be separate as an ego is the base of all misery; to be one, to be flowing, with whatsoever life brings to you, to be in it so intensely, so totally, that you are no more, you are lost, then everything is blissful.

The choice is there, but you have even become unaware of the choice. You have been choosing the wrong so continuously, it has become such a dead habit, that you simply choose it automatically. There is no choice left.

Become alert. Each moment when you are choosing to be miserable remember: this is your choice. Even this mindfulness will help, the alertness that this is my choice and I am responsible, and this is what I am doing to myself, this is my doing. Immediately, you will feel a difference. The quality of mind will have changed. It will be easier for you to move towards happiness.

Once you know that this is your choice, then the whole thing has become a game. Then if you love to be miserable, be miserable. But remember, this is your choice and don’t complain. There is nobody else who is responsible for it.

This is your drama. If you like this way, if you like a miserable way, if you want to pass through life in misery, then this is your choice, your game. You are playing it. Play it well! Then don’t go and ask people how not to be miserable.

That is absurd. Don’t go and ask masters and gurus how to be happy. The so-called gurus exist because you are foolish. You create the misery, and then you go and ask others how to uncreate it. And you will go on creating misery because you are not alert to what you are doing. From this very moment try, try to be happy and blissful.

Excerpted from My Way: The Way of the White Clouds/Courtesy: Osho International Foundation/www.osho.com

The post Be miserable if you like appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Misery against happiness

Misery is very superficial. You can manage it just on the surface, and manipulate it—it is under your control. That is the key word to be remembered about misery: it is under your control. And happiness is just the opposite.

You are under its control, hence it is confusing. Nobody can control happiness. When it comes, it is too much. It is bigger than you. It is so vast and you are so tiny… as if an ocean has dropped into a drop. It brings great confusion. But it is very blissful to be confused so.

Everyone loves misery

It is better to be confused with happiness than to be clear-cut with misery. It is better to be controlled by happiness than to be in control with misery.

That is why people go on clinging to misery. They can control it more easily. It is their own creation. They are the masters, so the ego remains on the throne like a king—suffering—but still, on the throne. That’s why people don’t leave misery easily. They suffer but they will cling. They will say that they want to get rid of it, but nobody is barring their way. They say they want to drop it, but they go on clinging to it like a treasure. Misery is not against the ego. It is all for it. It is very ego-enhancing. It feeds the ego, nourishes it.

But when happiness comes, it is as if the heavens are open for you and it is raining cats and dogs, and your small hut is just in a flood… all boundaries are lost. It is maddening.

Happiness is abstract, godly

Accept confusion. It is just temporary, transitory. Once you have become acquainted, with the ways of happiness, confusion will disappear. The guest is very new.

You don’t know who this guest is and how you are to behave with him. But by and by you will become more acquainted and confusion will disappear.

So don’t seek clarity, otherwise you will start clinging to your misery, because misery is very clear. You go to a doctor and if you have any disease he can diagnose it in a clear-cut way. He can diagnose if you have TB or cancer or this and that, a thousand and one diseases. But if you are healthy, he has nothing to diagnose.

In fact, medical science has nothing to define what health is. At the most, they can say that you are not ill, but they cannot be very definite about what health is. Health remains undefined. It is so big that no category is big enough. It cannot be pigeon-holed.

Happiness is bigger than health. Health is happiness of the body. Happiness is health of the soul. Wherever there is happiness, there is godliness. So listen to it. If it leads to confused states, okay. If it leads to unmapped, uncharted territories, okay. If it leads to chaos, okay. Welcome it, because wherever it leads, it leads towards godliness.

Predictability=death

Clarity is of the mind. Happiness is of the total. All that is alive is always confusing. Only dead things are clear and non-confusing. They can be categorised. You can say that this is a chair and this is a table. But is it so easy to say that this man is good and this man is bad? Not so easy, because the good man can turn into a bad one in a single moment, and the bad can turn into good in a single moment.

But that is the beauty of humanity, of personality—the dignity of man not being like a chair. You cannot categorise him. The time you take in categorising him may be enough for him to change. A saint can become a sinner in a single moment—because it is his decision—and a sinner can become a saint. So man remains open. Chairs are closed. The chair was a chair yesterday. The chair is a chair today. The chair is going to be a chair tomorrow. A chair has no growth. It is just stuck. That is the definition of a thing.

A person is an opening. Tomorrow who knows who you will be? Even you cannot say who you will be, because you have not known tomorrow yet and what it brings. So people who are really alert never promise anything, because how can you promise? You cannot say to somebody, “I will love you tomorrow also”, because who knows? Real awareness will give you such humbleness that you will say, “I cannot say anything about tomorrow. We will see. Let tomorrow come. I hope that I will love you, but nothing is certain.” And that is the beauty.

If a man can promise and can fulfil his promise, he is a thing; he is not a person. He is predictable. He has a character but he has no soul. A man of soul has no character. He is freedom and very confusing. A man of character is very clear, but a man who lives in freedom is very confusing to himself and to others also. But it has a beauty in it because it is alive, throbbing always with new possibilities, new potentialities.

Clarity is bogus

So forget about confusion because confusion is bound to be there. You are moving in new territory that you have never tasted before, so your old patterns will be confused. Listen to happiness; let that be the indicator. Let that decide your direction and move into that. Whatsoever the stake, never lose track of happiness.

Once you lose track of happiness, you may be very clear, philosophically very clever in labelling things and categorising things; you may become a great expert, but you will remain poor. Your soul will not be there. That is the difference between philosophy and religion. Philosophy seeks clarity. Religion seeks reality. These are totally different dimensions. If something is real, it is going to be confusing because the real is so vast that it contains contradictions. And if something is very clear, beware—it is going to be something false.

Mathematics is very clear. The most clear-cut science is mathematics because it is completely man-oriented. If man disappears, mathematics will disappear. It is just a man-manufactured thing. It is clear. Man has made it—it is not from God. It is from man, it is from the mind. It is the most clear-cut science in the world because it is the most bogus science. It corresponds to no reality. It is simply symbolic, just in the mind.

But if you seek reality, you will find it very confusing. You love a man and you find that you also hate him. It is very confusing and books don’t say that. They say if you love a man, you love him; you never hate him. But that’s philosophy. If you love a man, you hate him also. If you are happy with a man, you are also unhappy with him. Otherwise with whom are you going to be unhappy? Books say that when you love a man, you love. When you are happy with a man, you are always happy. That is nonsense. It is not a real thing; it is just a concept.

Reality is chaotic. It is wild… it is very stormy.

Excerpted from A Rose Is a Rose Is a Rose/ Courtesy: Osho International Foundation/www.osho.com

The post How to handle happiness appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.