According to Osho, an obsession is a psychic wound—you cannot drop it by will. Instead, stop condemning or identifying with it; bring meditative, friendly attention to it. Simply witness it, with care and patience. Meditation is medicine: as you observe without prejudice, the knot loosens, its poison drains, and the energy transforms, naturally dissolving the obsession.
You don’t push an obsession away; you kindly watch it until it heals and fades.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved master, how can one drop an obsession? Or is it not to be dropped at all, but enjoyed?
Satya, an obsession simply means a wound in your being, which keeps attracting you again and again, which goes on declaring itself, which wants your attention. You cannot drop it. How can you drop your wound? An obsession is a psychic wound, you cannot drop it. Understand it. Watch it. Pay attention to it. Be meditatively with it. And the more you are meditatively with it, the more it will be healed. Meditation is a healing force. The words 'meditation' and 'medicine' are derived from the same root; they both mean healing forces. Meditation is medicine -- medicine for the soul. So if you have any obsession, don't call names. The moment you call it an obsession you have already started condemning it. And if you condemn something you cannot watch it -- you are prejudiced against it. How can you watch the enemy? No need to condemn; whatsoever is…
Next time it happens, just watch it. Become very objective, a detached watcher, just to see what exactly it is, how it arises just like a small seed, and then how it grows and becomes a big tree and how you are completely lost in it. Just see the whole process of its growth and just see how you help it to grow. Don't be in a hurry to drop it and don't be in a hurry to get out of it; that's where people are wrong. People are in such a hurry to get out that they can't see how they get in, and that is the secret: just watch how you get in. Once you have seen the whole process and the misery that comes out of it, in that very understanding something evaporates. It is not a question of dropping -- just an old habit evaporates.
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHY DO I CLING TO MY MISERY? WHY CAN I NOT DROP IT? All the stones on your path can become stepping stones. They need not hinder you, you just have to know that they are steps. Look into your suffering, find out that good and bad are all together there. You cannot separate them, so the question of dropping does not arise. You have to use them together -- not as opposites, but as complementaries. And that is possible. Even poison can be used as medicine -- it is used. In fact, on most of the medicines you will find written: POISON -- in red letters. Poison is to kill, but by understanding it you can use it to save somebody who is dying. But if you are foolish, even nectar will kill you; you may drink too much of it.
You talk a lot about people obsessed with sex -- but what is obsession? Obsession with food or clothes or cleanliness, etcetera?
OBSESSION SIMPLY MEANS you are paying too much attention and energy to something which is not that important. Out of all proportion you have become focussed, hypnotized by something. Obsession is a kind of hypnosis that you have created within yourself. Then everything else disappears in your life and only one thing remains that becomes your focal point. Your life becomes one-dimensional: that is obsession. Life has to be multi-dimensional. There are people who are thinking only of sex, only of sex -- twenty-four hours a day. Deep down in their minds it is always lurking. They may be doing something else, but they are thinking of sex. Then it is an obsession. Sex itself is not an obsession, remember -- I am not against sex. I am not against anything. Obsession means now sex has taken the place of everything. There are people who are obsessed with food; they…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, SOMETIMES I FEEL VERY STRONG AND RADIANT. WHATEVER HAPPENS AROUND ME DOESN'T REALLY AFFECT ME. I FEEL A BEAUTIFUL DISTANCE FROM EVENTS. BUT AT OTHER TIMES I FEEL MY SKIN HAS BEEN STRIPPED AWAY AND EVERYTHING CAN REACH DEEPLY INTO ME; A SEEMINGLY UNFRIENDLY WORD OR GESTURE CAN HURT ME FOR HOURS. I WANT TO HIDE IN SOME CORNER FEELING VERY WEAK. I HAVE ALSO EXPERIENCED THAT A LOVING ATMOSPHERE AROUND ME WHEN I'M IN THIS MOOD CAN CREATE A DEEP JOY IN ME, BUT OFTEN I DON'T WANT TO COME OUT OF MY CORNER. I KNOW PERFECTLY WELL I HAVE REGRESSED IN THESE STATES, BUT THIS IS FREQUENTLY JUST AN INTELLECTUAL INSIGHT, NOT REALLY A HELP IN DROPPING THE DIS-EASE. I DON'T LIKE THIS CHILDISHNESS, BUT APPARENTLY I HAVE TO FACE IT IN ORDER TO TAKE THIS STEP. CAN YOU HELP?