Osho,
I feel negative about myself. How do you see me?
“It is not only your problem. It is the problem of almost everyone. All the cultures and all the religions have been conditioning you to feel negative about yourself.
No one is loved, appreciated, for just being himself or herself.
“You are asked to prove whether you are of any worth: ‘Bring gold medals from the university! Achieve success, money, power, prestige, respectability! Prove yourself!’
“Your worth is not intrinsic; that’s what has been taught to you. Your worth has to be proved.
“Hence a deep antagonism toward oneself arises, a deep feeling that ‘I am worthless as I am – unless proved otherwise.’
Very few people can succeed in this competitive world.
“Millions and millions of people are competing. How many people can succeed? How many people can become presidents and prime ministers? In a country of millions, only one person will become the president.
“And deep down everyone is hankering for it. Millions will feel that they are unworthy.
“How many people can become great poets? A Shakespeare, a Milton, a Shelley, a Rabindranath – how many people can become great poets? Everyone has something of the poetic in his being; everyone has some poetry to give to the world.
“But when it becomes an ambition… Ambition in itself is antipoetic. How many people can become great painters like Picasso or Dali? And everyone has something to create.
The idea of success is torturing you. It is the greatest calamity that has happened to humanity – the idea of success; that you have to succeed.
“Success means you have to compete, you have to fight. By fair or foul means. It doesn’t matter. Once you succeed everything is okay. The question is of success.
“Even if by foul means you succeed, once you are successful whatever you have done is okay. Success changes the quality of all your acts. Success changes evil means into good means. So the only question is how to succeed; how to reach to the top?
“And naturally, very few people can reach to the top. If everyone is trying to reach Everest, how many people can stand there? There is not much space there, only one person can stand there at ease.
“Then the millions who were also striving will feel failure, a great despair will settle in their souls. They will start feeling negative.
“This is a wrong kind of education. It is utterly poisonous, this so-called education that has been given to you.
Your schools, colleges, universities, are poisoning you. They are creating misery for you.
“They are the factories where hells are manufactured – but in such a beautiful way that you never become aware of what is going on. The whole world has become a hell because of a wrong education.
“Any education that is based on the idea of ambition is going to create hell on the earth – it has succeeded.
“Everyone is suffering and feeling inferior. This is really a strange situation.
No one is inferior and no one is superior because each individual is unique – no comparison is possible. You are you.
“You are simply you and cannot be anyone else. And there is no need either. You need not become famous, you need not be a success in the eyes of the world. Those are all foolish ideas.
All that you need is to be creative, loving, aware, meditative.
“If you feel poetry arising in you, write it for yourself, for your woman, for your children, for your friends – and forget all about it. Sing it and if no one listens, sing it alone and enjoy it. Go to the trees and they will applaud and appreciate it. Or talk to the birds and the animals.
“They will understand far more than the stupid human beings who have been poisoned for centuries and centuries with wrong concepts of life. The ambitious person is pathological.
“You say, ‘I feel negative about myself.’
Everyone is feeling negative about himself because that’s how you have been made to feel.
“Your parents have done it to you – this is a heritage, a great heritage. Your teachers have done it to you, your priests have done it to you, your political leaders have done it to you.
“So many people are doing it, naturally, you have become impressed by the very idea that you are worthless, that you don’t have any intrinsic meaning or value, that you don’t have any significance of your own.
“Each parent is saying to the child, to every child, ‘Prove that you have some worth.’ Being, just being, is not enough – some doing is needed.
My whole approach is that being is intrinsically valuable. Just that you are is such a gift from existence, what more can you ask for?
“Just to breathe in this beautiful existence is certificate enough that existence loves you, that existence needs you; otherwise you would not be here. You are.
“Existence has given birth to you. There must have been an immense need – you have filled a gap. Without you existence would be less.
“When I say this, I am saying it not only to you. I am saying it to the trees, to the birds, to the animals, to the pebbles on the shore. A single pebble less on the immense seashore and the seashore would not be the same. A single flower less and the universe would miss it.
“You have to learn that you are valuable as you are. I am not teaching you any ego – just the contrary. In the feeling that you are valuable as you are, you will also feel others are valuable as they are.
“Accept people as they are. Drop shoulds, oughts – those are the enemies.
You are carrying so many shoulds: ‘Do this and don’t do that!’ You are carrying so many dos and don’ts that you cannot dance. The burden is too heavy.
“You have been given so many ideals and goals – ideals of perfection – that you always feel you are falling short. And the ideals are utterly impossible. You cannot fulfill them. There is no possibility of fulfilling them. So you will always fall short.
“To be a perfectionist is to be ready for the psychiatrist’s couch; to be a perfectionist is to be a neurotic. And you have all been told to be perfect.
“Life is beautiful in all its imperfections. Nothing is perfect. Let me say to you that even God is not perfect because if God is perfect then Friedrich Nietzsche is right that God is dead.
“Perfection means death. Perfection means now there is no possibility of growth. Perfection means now everything is finished.
“Imperfection means there is a possibility to grow. Imperfection means the excitement of new pastures, ecstasy, adventure. Imperfection means that you are alive, that life is going to be there.
“Life is eternal, hence I say that life is eternally imperfect.
There is nothing wrong in being imperfect. Accept your imperfection. Then the idea of being negative toward yourself will disappear.
“Accept your present state and don’t compare it with some future perfection, future ideal. Don’t think in terms of how you should be. That is the root of all pathology – drop that.
“You are as you are today and tomorrow you may be different, but you cannot predict it today. There is no need to plan for it either.
“Live this day in all its beauty, in all its joy, in all its pain, agony, ecstasy. Live it in its totality – in its darkness, in its light. Live the hate and live the love. Live the anger and live the compassion.
Live whatever is available in this moment.
“My approach is not that of perfection but that of totality. Live the moment that is available to you totally and the next moment will be born out of it.
If this moment has been lived totally, the next is going to reach a higher pitch of totality, a higher peak of totality – because from where is the next moment going to come?
“It is going to be born out of this moment. Forget all about the future – the present is enough.
“Jesus says: ‘Think not of the morrow. Look at the lilies in the field, how beautiful they are. Even Solomon was not so beautiful attired in all his grandeur.’
“What is the secret of the beautiful lilies, the poor lilies? The secret is simple. They think not of the morrow, they don’t know anything of the future. Tomorrow exists not. This day is enough unto itself, this moment is enough unto itself.
And, your feeling of negativity about yourself will disappear.”
END
Excerpted from Osho, The Fish in the Sea Is Not Thirsty, Talk #3 – Enlightenment Is Not an Achievement
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