What happens when I feel disconnected from love and joy?

Beloved Osho, finally I have come home to myself with a silence and serenity never known before. I feel like a flower bud ready to open, yet I do not feel in touch with the energy of love and joy that would allow this flower to bloom. It is almost as if I have not yet fully opened my heart to myself. Osho, am I missing something or is it just a matter of time?

I can see it. I don't know where you are, who you are, but I can see through your question -- the bud cannot be there. Your question is very revealing. You have not reached home; perhaps some caravanserai ... an overnight stay but in the morning you have to move on. Home is when everything stops -- time and mind -- and nothing moves. Home is an eternal moment which begins but never ends. Home is when there is absolute nothingness ... no self, no I. In this nothingness only buds of silence and serenity can grow. And if you are open towards the universe, then it showers with nourishment and all buds start opening on their own accord. Meditate, so that you can go beyond mind and self. Certainly meditation will take a little time. Because you are so full of bullshit you will have to clean the…

That first shock makes you feel like you are dying because that's what you had always known as your life. Your very identity has disappeared as if the earth beneath your feet has suddenly disappeared: you look and there is no earth and you are falling into an abyss. But soon -- and you cannot do anything you have to go on falling, there is nothing to do -- soon you start feeling a great joy instead of fear. The shock disappears, and instead of the fear a great joy arises in you because now for the first time there is space for the joy to happen. It needs space, and thoughts are occupying your inner space so much that it is impossible for bliss to happen. My sannyasins have to do only one thing, that is, they have to become watchers of the mind, not controllers, just watchers.

Existence gives you love without any conditions. Whatsoever you want, you do -- that's your freedom. God loves you as you are. But we have destroyed even the idea of god. The Old Testament god says 'I am a very jealous god. If you worship some other god I will take revenge.' Now this is not god's voice. This is so ugly, the very idea that some jealous man is speaking in the name of god, that some jealous priest is wearing the mask of god, is so stupid. It is not god's face, not god's voice; god's love is unconditional. And god is not a person, hence he cannot be jealous. Jesus is far more right when he says god is love. But Christians misunderstood even that. They thought love was one of the qualities of god -- that is not so.

This situation can be changed by only one thing; if we again start learning how to connect ourselves with existence. The thing that is disconnecting us is the ego. We have started to look at ourselves as if we are islands -- and no man is an island. We are all part of a vast continent. And we are not accidental, we are needed. Nobody can replace you. You are absolutely essential, intrinsically essential to existence. Once this is felt a great grounding happens. As you go deeper into meditation you become aware that the existence loves you, that it is showering many many blessings every moment. Then you don't take them for granted, you start feeling grateful. And slowly slowly you feel that there is great love flowing towards you from every direction.

Ego is the only barrier in love; hence "samarpan", surrender. If ego is the only barrier in love then surrendering the ego opens the door to all the mysteries of love. Learn only one thing because that is the most important thing to learn: surrender the ego, be just a nobody, and you will experience great love -- and the experience of love ultimately becomes the experience of god. [Love's eye beautifies -- that was the meaning of Prem Ruth, Osho explained to a teacher from Germany.] People think that they fall in love because somebody is beautiful or something is beautiful. The truth is just the opposites something appears beautiful because you have fallen in love with it, not vice versa. It is love that makes everything beautiful. The moment you are in love with somebody or something suddenly its beauty is revealed to you.