According to Osho, ignoring negative mind-contents means nonjudgmental watchfulness: notice the anger or sadness without doing anything for or against it. Don’t suppress, express, or analyze—simply allow it, like a cloud passing through the sky. This relaxed, unconcerned awareness lets the energy dissolve on its own, leaving consciousness cleaner, quieter, and free of repressed residues.
Just watch the bad feeling like a cloud without fighting or acting on it, and it will pass by itself.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, you said the other day to ignore negative mind contents and not give energy to them. I find it difficult to stay on the razor's edge of ignoring without falling into suppressing and thus putting things back into the unconscious. Can you please tell me how to discriminate between these two?
And there is always a possibility that some emotion may become too big to control. You have been repressing and repressing and repressing, and the cloud is becoming bigger. And a point comes when you cannot control it anymore. Then something happens, which the world will see as you doing, but only those who know can see you are not doing it: you are under a very great impulsive force. You are behaving like a robot; you are helpless. You are murdering, you are raping, you are doing something ugly, but in fact you are not doing it. You have collected all that material which has become so powerful that now it can force you to do things -- things in spite of you, things against you. Even while you are doing it you know it is not right. You know, "I should not be doing it. Why am I…
How is it possible to be impulsive and to have feelings like anger, sadness or jealousy, without hurting other people and without suppressing these feelings?
The West is absolutely ignorant of a science called meditation; hence these kinds of problems arise. These are not real problems, these are only symptoms. These are symptoms of a non-meditative mind. If you can meditate, if you can create a little distance between your mind and your being, if you can see and feel and experience that you are not your mind, a tremendous revolution happens within you. If you are not your mind, then you cannot be your jealousy, then you cannot be your sadness, then you cannot be your anger. Then they are just there, unrelated to you; you don't give any energy to them. They are really parasites who have been living on your blood, because you were identified with the mind. Meditation means disidentification with the mind. It is a simple method, not something complex that only a few people can do. Just sit silently…
Question: Third question: Osho, how can one control thoughts? He came back dancing. He placed his head at Buddha’s feet and said: You have given me a very deep message. Today I have found a sutra. I will use this same sutra with the mind. Today a great thing has become clear within me. Your great compassion sent me back. I was not willing to go—but a revolution has happened—just sitting on that bank. Sitting by that spring I understood: had I stepped into the water—had you not told me otherwise—I would have tried to purify it, and in doing so I would only have made it more impure. The moment I stepped in, more mud would have risen. You spoke rightly: sit on the bank and wait. Do nothing; just keep watching. The spring will clear by itself. So too I will do with my mind.
Anger comes in a second—then how can we suppress it in a second?
No, no—I am not talking about suppression. I am not saying suppression. (The audio recording of the question is not clear.) Find solitude—close the door somewhere, sit quietly—and watch whatever arises. Just watch; do not do anything. It will arise for a moment—watch exactly that. No worry. You are mistaken in thinking anger arises for only a moment; its surge lingers for a long time. The flare-up may be a moment, but its trailing line of smoke can go on and on. No worry if you cannot see it in its full youth; even if it appears in its old age, there is no harm. Even if only its final streak is visible, there is no harm. Begin the experiment of seeing. As the practice of seeing grows dense, one day it will be caught right at its birth. For now, it will be like this—that you will see its…
Osho said that there was no need to try to still the mind, to stop the thoughts. He said that just as the traffic goes by and one remains on the sidewalk, unaffected, just a watcher, so one should simply witness the thoughts as they went by. We are not our thoughts, and recognising that we are the witness is enough. The very acceptance of the thoughts makes one more relaxed. The relaxation helps to create a distance, to separate oneself. To evaluate a thought as good or bad means that you are attached to your thoughts -- so one should not put labels on them.] ... put yourself aside, sit under a tree, and just watch the traffic. Soon, one day, the traffic disappears and the road is empty. Suddenly there is an interval and in that interval is meditation. But that interval cannot be created or cultivated.