According to Osho, feeling guilty and unworthy is the mind’s conditioned verdict; it reduces love and life to repetitive, mechanical gestures—boring, joyless, energy-draining—turning partners into commodities and you into a loser of vitality. Don’t take judgments personally. Replace guilt with awareness, playfulness, and sacred sensitivity: create beauty, relax, dance, meditate together, and let love arise spontaneously from your whole being rather than from mental projection.
Those heavy feelings come from your head’s rules; they make life and love dull, so drop the blame and bring warm attention, play, and respect so love can happen naturally.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Why is it that 'going with the flow' makes me feel guilty? Please talk about guilt . It is the guilt factor that makes floating so unattractive.
The child wants to enjoy everything, and the parents are guilt-ridden. The child wants to shout and he enjoys shouting; that is his expression, that is his creativity. That shout, if helped and not destroyed, will become his song -- that is the beginning of the song. But we stop him. We say, "Don't shout! This is ugly, this is bad, this is unmannerly. This is not done in the society. You belong to a famous family, you belong to a great, respectable family -- you should not do this. This is okay for the urchins, but not for you. You represent us: look how serious we are. We never shout -- and you are shouting?" And the child was enjoying the shouting so much. In fact, when you stop him shouting you have condemned his joy -- that's what he will understand deep down, existentially. What will happen to…
[A sannyasin, newly arrived from America, said she was constantly thinking of her husband whom she had left for someone else. She expressed a sense of guilt because she felt she was the reason for their separating.] Mm, never think much about the past. That which is gone, is gone; you cannot undo it. If you constantly think about it you destroy your present and your future too, because that guilt will always be a barrier on love. Nothing can be done about it, so guilt is absurd. What can you do? All that you can do is please don't repeat the same pattern again, that's all. Whatsoever has happened had to happen. The situation was such that it had to happen; it was impossible to avoid it. If it was possible to avoid it, it would have been avoided.
One should start loving oneself, accepting oneself, because there is no other way for you than to be yourself. Just accept, otherwise you will create misery. All 'shoulds' are dangerous, and all ideals and perfectionist ideas are very very dangerous. There is no need for them! Whatsoever you can do, do, and enjoy it. When you feel that you want to get out of it, simply get out -- with no grudge, no grumble or guilt, so you remain clean and pure. [The leader answers: I've got so much guilt!] So accept it! That is what the problem is! If you have guilt, accept that too. Now you will create another should -- that one should not have guilt -- and then you feel guilty about that! I am saying that whatsoever you are, relax and accept it.
[A group member said that he was aware of much guilt connected with his leaving his wife and young son. The groupleader commented that the man used the guilt to avoid situations. Osho said that to feel guilty had nothing to do with being religious, and that guilt was nothing but an ego trip He said that priests have exploited guilt, and that they are cunning people. He said that the guilt presupposes that you are in control of what happens, but that you are not the doer if you do not have a crystallized self... ] You are like driftwood. The wind blows that way, you drift that way. The wind blows this way, you go this way. The driftwood cannot say that it wanted to go south but it is going north, and it feels guilty. This is exactly the case.
Beloved Osho, I have a question about guilt. I can't see it, or taste it, or touch it, but somehow it is always there -- especially when I am doing nothing. It only disappears when I am working, and returns immediately at the thought of dancing, or singing, or meditating. What is the mechanism of guilt and will I ever be free of it?
Prem Prasado, the mechanism of guilt is very simple. You have been conditioned from your very childhood to believe that doing something is better than doing nothing -- and meditation is going into nothingness. The idea has been imposed on you for so long it has taken roots in your mind. But because the idea is basically false, it can be dropped. First you have to understand there is no guilt in existence anywhere; there may be mistakes, but no guilt at all. Guilt is a by-product of the idea of sin: that you are committing something sinful. The world wants you to be extroverts -- workaholics, it wants you to continuously work and work and work. The world has no need, apparently at least, of those who sit silently, doing nothing. They also are needed -- immensely needed -- but to see it needs great understanding. A man of…