Stop looking outside and gently practice awareness inside yourself; as you keep looking within, the way becomes clear.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, I don’t even know what I’m waiting for. I only know that I am waiting. But nothing ever happens. And I am very alone. What should I do?
Such is everyone’s condition. Waiting—waiting! But for whom are you waiting? You don’t really know. To wait simply means you feel a lack. Something is missing. Something should have been that is not. Some space is empty. To wait means: I am not where I ought to be, not as I ought to be. You are not waiting for someone else; you are waiting for your own flowering. You are waiting for your flower to blossom. This event will not come from the outside. No one is going to come. If you keep waiting for another, you will keep on waiting. No one has ever come, and no one ever will. You have to become; no one has to come. There is no one to come. You have to become. Understand this distinction—everything turns on it. If you are waiting, there is nothing to do. You sit at your door,…
You spoke today of love and death and the importance of experiencing love to pass consciously into death. I have never experienced deep love, only superficial attachments. I do not love even myself so how can I love another? I know there is nothing I can do regarding this impasse as there is a season for all things and at the right time what is needed happens. Is there anything more I can do than wait?
And don't postpone, don't play games. These are mind games. You say, "I KNOW THERE IS NOTHING I CAN DO...." How do you know? How do you know that nothing can be done? Have you done ALL that can be done? Have you come to this point by your own experience, that nothing can be done? Then you would not have asked the question: "Is there anything more I can do than wait?" You are still searching to do something. This is not your experience; there is still some desire to do. There is something still groping in the dark, but you are consoling yourself that "There is a season for all things and at the right time what is needed happens." This is cliche. Drop it. You have heard it repeated too often, it has entered into your mind. This is just consoling yourself. This consolation will become poison.…
Osho, I have been listening to you for years. I have been with you a long time. From time to time I have heard many different statements from you, even mutually contradictory ones, yet no question has ever arisen in my mind about them. And in spite of them you have always remained one and indivisible in my vision and in my heart. Kindly shed some light on this.
You can be with me in two ways: through thought and intellect, or through the heart and feeling. If you are with me through the intellect and thought, there will be great difficulty. Day after day you will find contradictory statements. Every day you will have to sort them out, and still you will not succeed. The intellect never really resolves anything. Even where things are simple, the intellect tangles them up. And my words are very tangled. Even where everything is clear, the intellect creates problems. And I speak of paths filled with mist. Even if there were only one path, the intellect would find contradictions; here there are countless paths—contradictions upon contradictions. There is hardly a statement I have not refuted a thousand times. So if you are with me through the intellect, only two things are possible: either you will go mad and drop the intellect, or…
At times I feel like I can just silently sit and wait for eternity -- and other times like sobbing with the futility of sitting outside a gate I cannot even see -- frozen between action and inaction. Does one miss by demanding? Is impatience a lack of trust?
So waiting has to be with no idea for what. A real waiter cannot answer the question for what he is waiting; he can only shrug his shoulders, he can say 'I don't know.' But one thing is certain: that waiting is infinitely beautiful, waiting is infinitely joyous. When the whole turmoil disappears and it is all silence, it has a beauty of its own. You ask me: DOES ONE MISS BY DEMANDING? Certainly, absolutely. Demand has to be dropped. IS IMPATIENCE A LACK OF TRUST? Yes, certainly, absolutely. Impatience simply means you can't trust existence, you have to do something. You can't just sit there and trust that it will happen when you are ripe; that when spring comes, the grass will grow of its own accord. You cannot trust; you have to pull the grass from the earth. You cannot wait like a farmer who has thrown his…
[A visitor says: I've come here hoping with my heart to be captured by something and I'm still waiting. I have this idea that I won't be able to have the drive to follow a path until my heart is captured, so I'm just waiting.] Mm, I understand. You don't know your own strength -- nobody knows, hence the problem. You don't know what you can do and what you can be. And I can understand. It is difficult to know unless you have done it. By doing it you come to know what you can do. The potentiality in itself cannot be known unless it becomes actual. Everybody is so infinitely potential, but if you are simply waiting for somebody to do it for you, it will never happen, because there are things which cannot be done for you by anybody else.