According to Osho, progress stalls when the same mind tries to change itself—it only represses symptoms and deepens the inner split between 'what is' and 'what should be.' Real transformation arises effortlessly through total acceptance of yourself as you are. Acceptance dissolves division, awakens intelligence, and heals from the roots, allowing change to happen naturally rather than by egoic effort.
Stop fighting yourself; accept who you are right now, and real change will grow on its own.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
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.
[A sannyasin who is leaving for the west says he has a hard time accepting everything about himself and finds it particularly tricky relating to people -- especially to strangers and to groups of people: I don't know whether to just accept it, or to try and do something about it... ] Accepting it is doing something about it. Acceptance is not mere acceptance: it is the very method of changing it. The moment you accept anything, it starts coming into the conscious. It leaves the unconscious, it starts coming to the light because now you are not denying it so there is no need for it to hide. Now you are not against it and there is no need to go on living underground: it can come and face you. And when things come to the conscious and you see them clearly....
I have tried my whole life to change myself; but it seems nothing ever changes -- I remain the same. Is not there any hope for me?
This is not the way to change. You can change one word, but deep down you are still Japanese. It will assert itself from somewhere else. Either you will go crazy or you will become a hypocrite. Your society, you insane society, only leaves two alternatives for you: either go crazy trying to improve upon yourself, pulling yourself up by your shoestrings; or if you are a little more intelligent, be a hypocrite, pretend say one thing, do just the opposite -- keep a back door to your life. On the front door have a beautiful facade -- paint the should, the ideal, the ought -- and live from the back door, live really naturally from the back door. But that too creates a split: you can never be at ease, you are constantly Lying, and you will be caught again and again. How long can you pretend? And you…
I have been here two years doing nothing to improve myself, just reading, eating, sleeping, drifting. Now I feel as empty and lost as the day I came. Is there any point in staying longer?
I HAVE BEEN HERE TWO YEARS DOING NOTHING. Doing nothing is not so easy. Sambuddha, doing nothing means allowing the whole to do thing, allowing Tao to happen. Doing nothing is the greatest thing in the world. If a man can do nothing then everything happens, then all is possible, because to do nothing means one becomes nothing, nobody, emptiness. And out of that emptiness arises all that is, all that is possible. all that is potential. Out of emptiness opens the lotus of being. NOW I FEEL AS EMPTY AND LOST AS THE DAY I CAME. You have been changing seats but, because you are deaf, you can go to the balcony, you can go to the front seat, you can go to the back and nothing will change. Yes, in two years or two hundred years or two hundred lives, nothing will change. Change comes only when you…
Improvement is not possible. Improvement is a very false notion. It has never happened... it cannot happen. By the nature of things it is not possible. Nobody ever improves, because everyone is already that which one can be, so one has to relax and accept it. If that is your pattern, then that is you. Once you accept it, things will start changing. And I don't say they will improve -- I say they will start changing. Change is a totally neutral concept. In improvement there is greed, in improvement there is ego. In change.... It is just like summer changes, and then it is rains, and rains change and it is winter, and seasons change -- but there is no improvement. The whole western mind is basically caught up with the concept of progress. Evolution is there, but there is no progress.