Stay with your inner tug-of-war instead of grabbing quick answers; feel it, watch it, and let real understanding grow by itself.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, I find myself in conflict between a part of myself that tries to be clear and intelligent with others and a part that is emotional, unpredictable, very unclear and somehow unconscious, but perhaps more real. I tell myself just to be authentic and then I get really confused. Meditation takes away the immediate tension but I have found no way to get to the root of the problem. Am I just not wanting to see something very obvious?
Be spontaneous, don't decide about the future. Then there is no frustration, no failure, no feeling that you have missed. All these feelings are born because you are deciding about something which is not in your hands. The future is not in your hands. The old saying is, man proposes and God disposes. There is no God to dispose. In the very act of proposing you have disposed yourself; the very act of proposing means you are trying to make the unknown certain, you are trying to make the living flow of life a frozen pond. If you live choicelessly and if you live spontaneously, moment to moment, responding to every situation that arises in front of you, your growth will be in leaps and bounds, and you will never for a single moment feel frustration. Each moment will bring greater joy and greater fulfillment. Instead of feeling despair you…
I am having a great struggle deep inside before taking the.final step, but last night, when I slept in orange clothes, I felt myself a different person. What are you doing?
The other becomes like a mirror to you. You can see your ugliness in the other. The other provokes your unconscious, brings it to the surface. You will have to know all hidden parts of your being and the easiest way is to be mirrored, reflected, in a relationship. Easier, I call it, because there is no other way -- but it is hard. It is hard, arduous, because you will have to change through it. And when you come to a Master an even greater challenge exists before you: you have to decide, and the decision is for the unknown, and the decision has to be total and absolute, irreversible. It is not a child's game; it is a point of no return. So much conflict arises. But don't go on continuously changing, because this is the way to avoid yourself. And you will remain soft, you will remain…
Osho, there is a great conflict in my mind about whether I will find a solution by coming to you or not! I am very confused. My mind is obsessed with things that are not acceptable. When I am by myself, I somehow adjust with them, but when I reach you my disturbances increase and I panic. My personality has become more stubborn and skeptical; because of this surrender is difficult right now. Even so, I feel a strong urge to come to the ashram.
But what you call unacceptable must be accepted. Your acceptance or rejection doesn’t change reality; nothing vanishes or appears because of it. If you want transformation, accept life in its totality, because transformation happens through acceptance; rejection creates conflict. Rejection splits you into fragments. If you fight your sexual desire, you are in two pieces—on one side your desire, on the other “you.” And remember, sexual energy is no small thing; it permeates every fiber of you. You are born out of it; you are made of it. Every particle of your body is suffused with it. If you fight it, you fight yourself. In a wrestling match against yourself, you can never win. You will be badly defeated, badly broken, shattered into pieces like mercury scattering, like glass smashed on stone. Life must be transformed—raised to heights—given wings. For that, there must be no inner conflict, no duality within:…
Osho, should I understand that not accepting a challenge is a kind of escapism?
Yes, not accepting challenges is a kind of escape, an escapism. And until we accept challenges, our real birth cannot happen. The second birth I speak of will happen only when we accept all challenges. We accept them, we fight with them, we face them; in that very facing, the soul is born within us. In an escapist, the soul is never going to be born, because he runs away from the very occasions where the soul takes birth. Take a seed: the gardener plants it in the soil. If the seed gets frightened and says, “I am not going into the darkness of the earth; I was fine lying in a corner of the gardener’s house. I will not go into the earth, into the dark,” then the seed is refusing the challenge of descending into darkness—no sprout will ever arise in it. Or suppose the seed is placed…
Osho, the last part of what you said to us is very beautiful and blissful, but the first part is very frightening -- breaking the cup, suffering, falling down on the ground, you not being there. Then our minds come in and we play tricks with our bodies. We say, "I have this pain. I have this blister." can you give us some clue as to how we can get over the barriers we create for ourselves when we come up against fear?
If you have fear, you have fear- why make a problem out of it? Then you know that you have fear, just as you have two hands. Why create a problem out of it- as if you have only one nose, not two? Why create a problem out of it? Fear is there: accept it, note it. Accept it, don't bother about it. What will happen? Suddenly you will feel it has disappeared. And this is the inner alchemy -- a problem disappears if you accept it, and a problem grows more and more complex if you create any conflict with it. Yes, suffering is there, and suddenly fear comes- accept it. It is there and nothing can be done about it. And when I say nothing can be done about it, don't think that I am talking about pessimism to you. When I say nothing can be done about…