According to Osho, confront yourself in aloneness by not escaping or distracting; accept the fear and pain as tapas, an austere fire signaling new birth. Stay solitary, observe the ego’s socially-made images wither without trying to save them. Endure consciously until the false self dissolves; then the authentic, fearless being can emerge.
Sit quietly alone, don’t run from the hurt, and watch the fake “me” fall away so your real self can shine.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Confrontation of oneself in aloneness is very fearful, very painful. What to do?
If just for three months you can be in total solitude, in total silence, not fighting with anything, allowing everything to be, whatsoever it is, within three months the old will be gone and the new will be there. But the secret is allowing it to be, howsoever fearful, painful, howsoever apparently dangerous, deathlike. Many moments will come when you will feel as if you will go mad if you don't do something and involuntarily you will start to do something. You may know that nothing can be done, but you will not be in control and you will start to do something. It is just as if you are moving through a dark street in the night, midnight, and you feel fear because there is no one around and the night is dark and the street is unknown -- so you start whistling. What can whistling do? You know…
I am experiencing something that I am calling "the pain of myself". Can you say what this is?
Vandan, the ordinary life of humanity is a continuous effort to avoid oneself. Everybody is doing it, in different ways of course. Nobody can sit silently and be alone. Watch yourself, how fidgety you become if there is nothing to do. If the radio is not there and television is not there and the newspaper is not there and you don't have a book to read and nobody to talk to, just think how fidgety, restless you become. You are almost in a panic, as if you are dying. You need something to remain occupied with, you cannot be with yourself. And whenever you are with yourself you start feeling bored. Now, this is strange. And if somebody else feels bored with you, you feel very hurt, but you yourself feel bored with yourself! And everybody is the same: nobody feels good being alone. Man is constantly escaping from himself;…
Osho, you say meditation is a solitary journey. And I am very afraid of loneliness. Give me courage.
Someone gives you a hard shove—there is a quarrel. Where is there space to remember yourself? Someone embraces you, loves you—where is there space to remember yourself? Your loves and your quarrels, your friendships and your enmities—all do one thing: they keep you tangled, they keep you busy. They give you no chance to take a small look within. There, you must move on alone. Go on alone If none walks with you upon the pilgrim’s hour, go on alone. Yes, fear arises in becoming solitary—but only until you truly enter it. Once you do, you will be astonished: peace, aloneness, silence. When the experience of inner solitude dawns, you will be amazed—fear vanishes. Because in that solitude it is known that you are nectar, amrit—“amritasya putrah,” children of immortality! You have no death; how can there be fear? You yourself are the Divine—pure sat-chit-ananda, being-consciousness-bliss. What can frighten you?…
Beloved Osho, I am always afraid of being alone, because when I am alone I start to wonder who I am. It feels that if I inquire deeper, I will find out that I am not the person who I have believed I was for the past twenty-six years, but a being, present at the moment of birth and maybe also the moment before. For some reason, this scares me completely. It feels like a kind of insanity, and makes me lose myself in outside things in order to feel safer. Osho, who am I, and why the fear?
Keep engaged, do anything stupid. People are running towards the beaches, bumper to bumper, miles-long traffic. And if you ask them where they are going, they are getting away from the crowd -- and the whole crowd is going with them. They are going to find a solitary, silent space -- all of them. In fact, if they had remained home it would have been more solitary and silent -- because all the idiots have gone in search of a solitary place. And they are rushing like mad, because two days will be finished soon, they have to reach -- don't ask where! And on the beaches, you see... they are so crowded, not even marketplaces are so crowded. And strangely enough, people are feeling very much at ease, taking a sunbath. Ten thousand people on a small beach taking a sunbath, relaxing. The same person on the same beach…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, IT SEEMS THAT ONE OF THE GREATEST HURDLES THAT FACES A HUMAN BEING IS TO BE ALONE, TO STAND ALONE IN THE FACE OF THE OPINIONS OF THE WORLD, TO STAND ALONE IN THE FACE OF THE LIES OF THE WORLD, TO BE ABLE TO BE PHYSICALLY ALONE, AND, ULTIMATELY, TO BE ALONE WITHOUT EVEN OUR MINDS -- THE COMPANION OF LAST RESORT. WE REALLY KNOW WE ARE ALONE, WE KNOW WE WILL DIE INTO ALONENESS, WE KNOW THAT EVERY CONTACT OUTSIDE OURSELVES IS TRANSITORY -- ONLY YOU REFLECT THE SILENCE OF THE STARS, THE SILENCE OF INFINITY, THE SILENCE OF ETERNITY -- YET JUST BELOW THE HEART THERE IS A PAIN, A KNOT, A FEAR... THE FEAR OF BEING A LITTLE BOY WITHOUT FRIENDS, THE FEAR OF FAILURE AND REJECTION, AND THE PAIN OF PRETENDING I DON'T CARE.