Is the desire to be loved and accepted completely a form of neediness?

Beloved Osho, I find more and more that the most essential thing for me in relationship, as well as my strongest wish, is to be loved and accepted completely, exactly the way I am. Is this just another way of being needy and demanding? Will you throw some light on this confusion I am in?

Tamar, you have put everything upside down. I have been telling you, accept everybody as he is. Don't make demands that he should fulfill some ideal of your conditioning, that he should be according to your fancy. This is not the way of love, and this is not even the way to behave humanly. Love accepts the person as he is. Certainly, the acceptance of the person as he is brings tremendous changes in the person. But they are not demanded. They happen on their own accord. But you have put the whole story in an absolutely wrong way. Rather than accepting others as they are, you want them to accept you as you are. Your question is really funny. And it shows how you go on listening to me and making up things which I have never said. I have never said such a thing in my whole life.…

And when you love, love comes -- there is no other way. Once you are obsessed too much with the idea that you should be loved, that you need love, you are holding a wrong concept. You can go on sitting with that concept -- nobody is going to come to you, because once people become suspicious that you are waiting for love, they become afraid. They will avoid you; they won't come on your path. They will say goodbye from far away. At the most they will say hello and escape because they become intuitively aware that somebody is there ready to exploit them. Your desire to be loved appears to the other person as an exploitation. The other becomes afraid because he sees that you are going to use him as a means. He starts feeling that he is going to become a victim.

For centuries the society has been using that strategy to destroy the integrity of the individual. It gives you ideals, it tells you how you should be. It never allows you to love yourself as you are. It creates division: you are one thing, the society says you have to be something else; you become two. Your ideal self creates a constant tension in you. Your real self also becomes a burden because you don't want it; the society says that it is worthless: Drop it. The real is denied and the unreal is imposed. Now this is the whole misery of man: how can one ever be in bliss if the real is denied, rejected, condemned, and the unreal is appreciated, valued? The unreal remains unreal but it hovers above your head continuously torturing you: You should be this.

I have spent all my life trying to meet somebody who will really love me and who will accept to be really loved by me. All my attempts have been painful failures and I feel utterly desperate and rejected. What is wrong with me? How can I feel the love inside of me? How can I really meet and love myself?

You say: I HAVE SPENT ALL MY LIFE TRYING TO MEET SOMEBODY WHO WILL REALLY LOVE ME... And what do you mean by 'really love me'? You must have an idea -- that is the second thing that went wrong. You have some idea of what real love is. You must be a perfectionist, and in life nothing is perfect. That's why things are beautiful! If in life things were perfect, life would have been utter boredom. Bertrand Russell seems to be right when he says, "I would not like to go to heaven if there is any heaven, because there you will find only perfect people, and life will be utterly boring." Just think of living with perfect people... everybody is perfect. That means there will be no growth any more, no evolution; nothing new will ever happen now. The people who live in heaven, if there is any…

Question: Third question: Osho, why does whoever I desire reject me? Now you ask: “Why does the one you desire reject you?” He doesn’t want to go to the madhouse. Life’s experience makes a person cautious. The one who rejects you may be intelligent. Examine your love afresh. Something wrong is hidden in it. In the garments of your love there are chains. There is a cover of love, but inside there is something else. Do you want to be someone’s owner? Do you want to possess someone? Do you want to use someone as an object? No one wants to be used—because whenever someone is used, they are insulted. No one wants to have an owner—because whenever someone becomes your owner, you have to lose your soul. No one wants to be dependent. People do want love, but they do not want bondage.