Worry

How is one to stop worrying?

This is from "Pathik the Pathetic." He unnecessarily goes on becoming pathetic. Now, "how to stop worrying?" What is the need to stop worrying? If you start trying to stop worrying, you create a new worry: how to stop worry. Then you start worrying about the worries; then you double them. There is no way. And if somebody says, as there are people.... Dale Carnegie has written a book HOW TO STOP WORRYING AND START LIVING. These people create more worries because they give you a desire that worries can be stopped. They cannot be stopped, but they disappear -- that I know. They cannot be stopped, but they disappear! You cannot do anything about them. If you simply allow them and don't bother a bit, they disappear. Worries disappear, they cannot be stopped -- because when you try to stop them, who are you? The mind which is creating…

About worrying? About worrying, about being restless. All the ruts have become those of worry. Like when a bullock cart moves, a track gets formed. Now the cart’s wheels have to run caught in that track. They may wander here and there for a little while, but they will slip back into it. A groove has formed.

For twenty years a man worries and frets; he doesn’t sleep—money, money, how to earn, how to earn—and slowly, slowly, slowly his mind becomes a mechanism of worry; the nerves, the brain, all become habituated to worrying. Now he has managed to earn money. For this he worried for twenty years! And having earned it he finds there is neither happiness nor peace. It is not that money cannot give you any peace—money can give you order, arrangement—but in those twenty years your brain has been thrown out of balance. So the man begins to say, “Ah, money—there is no happiness or peace in it! I’ve earned it and I’ve become even more restless and miserable! So there is no substance in money. It should be dropped.” Here the man is making a mistake. He is not able to understand that money is only a convenience, a means. If you…

First, I have asked one question. And I have also asked one or two related questions. It is asked: Osho, the mind is restless. Without effort and without renunciation, how can it become steady?

No. I will say to you: it is not an effort. If I am clenching my fist and ask you, “How do I open this fist?” what will you say? You will say: “To open it, you need do nothing. Please stop doing what you are doing to clench it; the fist will open by itself.” Opening is not an effort; the moment you cease the effort that clenches, opening happens. Or if I pull down a branch and hold it, and ask how to return it to its place—what will you say? “Do nothing to return it. Just stop doing what holds it down; it will return by itself.” What are we doing continuously with the mind? We are doing something. If we stop that, the mind will quiet by itself. It will quiet by itself. As I said this morning, we are constantly engaged in resistance—twenty-four hours resisting.…

A friend has asked, Osho, I am very restless, and so much energy gets used up in this restlessness. How can I make use of it, and what is its cause?

But the anger remains there; it will not change by your turning away. It will change by your standing your ground and seeing it. If you turn your back, anger will make deeper wounds within and lay down roots. Fix both your eyes on anger. This is the moment to consciously see anger. When lust seizes the mind, do not run. Do not panic. Do not chant Ram-Ram. Look lust straight in the face. A direct encounter with the passions is necessary. But man has been taught to run. He has been told, wherever something bad appears—run away. But where will you run? The bad is within you; it will go with you. There is no way to run away from yourself. If evil were outside somewhere, we could run. It stands within—we will have to change it. We will have to use this manure. And using it is not…