Pain

Question: BELOVED OSHO, I USED TO BE SO SCARED OF BEING HIT OR EXPOSED. SINCE I HAVE BEEN HERE WITH YOU AND MELTING INTO YOU, I'M LONGING FOR IT WITH AN UNKNOWN IMPATIENCE. I LONG TO GET THE OBSTACLES OUT OF THE WAY, TO BE OVER AND DONE WITH `THIS ONE' SO THAT I CAN MOVE ON THE JOURNEY TO THE NEXT ROCK ON MY PATH. FEAR SEEMS TO BE JUST A QUITE UNIMPORTANT, OLD HABIT. I AM EXPERIENCING YOU AS A BOUNDLESS INVITATION. NO BARRIERS ARE THERE WHICH I COULD USE TO RATIONALIZE A LACK OF COURAGE. I FEEL THANKFUL ABOUT THE LACK OF ORGANIZATION AROUND YOU; THERE IS NO MORE FEAR THAT GETTING A HIT FROM YOU MAY BE USED BY PEOPLE WHO ARE IN POWER TO FEED THEIR OWN JUDGMENTS, TO PUT ME DOWN OR TO MAKE ME FEEL GUILTY.

Maneesha has asked a question: BELOVED OSHO, HAS ONE ONLY RECEIVED A HIT IF IT HURTS?

Maneesha, a master hits not to hurt but to heal. And a disciple receives the hit with tremendous gratitude, not with anger. Unless a hit is received with gratitude it cannot do its work of healing. You are all full of wounds, and they all need to be exposed to the sun, to the open sky. Unless you allow yourself to be exposed completely, you cannot get rid of those wounds. The normal way in the world is to hide the wounds so nobody knows about them -- go on hiding them deeper and deeper in the unconscious, so even you forget them. But to work on the consciousness, cleaning it from all the wounds is absolutely necessary. Those wounds have to be brought into the open. You are asking, "Has one only received a hit if it hurts?" No, Maneesha. If it hurts you have missed. If it does…

Osho, the path of simplicity is the second one. What is it?

The first path is to try to be simple, to make an effort, to practice it. Cultivated simplicity is always false. Because to practice, by its very meaning, is to practice against your own mind; otherwise, what is the practice against? If being naked is blissful for me, I will not call it practice. If wearing clothes is blissful for me and then I start practicing being naked, will nakedness be a “practice”? And if being naked is simply blissful—if wearing clothes never gave me the joy that comes from being naked—then no one would call it a practice. It is my joy. We practice only that which is contrary to us; practice means repression. Practice is inevitably repression. And wherever effort is required, against whom is that effort made—against oneself? No effort made against oneself can ever win. How could it win? Who would win? How can I win…

Jesus says the kingdom of god is within you... But we are running everywhere else. We are going everywhere else except in. Meditation is simply a strategy to turn your outgoing consciousness into an ingoing consciousness. It is a way of turning in. All my efforts here are to turn you on and to turn you in. [Live in the mind and you inhabit a madhouse Osho told his newest swami.] The mind goes on driving you crazy for the simple reason that it has many contradictory desires. In fact each desire in the mind is always balanced by its opposite. Mind lives in a constant struggle, conflict. For example you want to be with someone, you love someone, and at the same time you want to have your own space, you want to be alone.