Accept, and then just watch
Through awareness, transformation happens spontaneously. If you become aware of your anger, understanding penetrates. Just watching, with no judgment, not saying good, not saying bad. There is lightning, anger, you feel hot, the whole nervous system shaking and quaking, and you feel a tremor all over the body - a beautiful moment, because when energy functions you can watch it easily.
Close your eyes and meditate on it. Don't fight it, just look at what is happening. Just like you watch a storm in the sky - the whole sky filled with electricity, so much lightning, so much beauty - lie down and look at the sky and watch. Then do the same inside.
Clouds are there, because without clouds there can be no lightning - dark clouds of thoughts are there. Somebody has insulted you, somebody has laughed at you - many dark clouds are there in the inner sky and much lightning. Watch. It is a beautiful scene - terrible also, because you don't understand. So you are afraid of it.
Awareness is an in-going phenomenon, it always goes inwards: the less aware you are, the more out you are; unconscious - you are completely out of your house, wandering around. Unconsciousness is a wandering outside; consciousness is a deepening of the inside.
When anger is there, keep looking, watching, and soon you will see a change. The moment the watcher comes in, the anger has already started becoming cool, the heat is lost. Then you can understand that the heat is given by you; it is your identification that makes it hot, and the moment you feel it is not hot, the fear is gone, and you feel unidentified with it - a distance is created. It is there, lightning flashing around you, but you are not it. You become a watcher on a hill: down in the valley, there is much lightning... the distance keeps growing, and a moment comes when suddenly you are not joined to it at all. The identity is broken, and the moment the identity breaks, immediately the whole hot process becomes a cool process - anger becomes compassion.
Anything brought by will-power is going to be wrong - let that be a clear criterion. Then how to bring awareness? Understand. When anger comes, try to understand why it has come; try to understand without any condemnation, without any justification either, without any evaluation. Just watch it. Be neutral.
And you will find there is a chain: the anger disappears, but because you looked deeply into it, something else has been found - maybe ego was hurt, that's why you become angry. Now watch this ego, which is more subtle. Go on watching it. Get deep into it.
Nobody has ever been able to find anything in the ego. So if you go deep into it, you will not find it; and when you have not found it, it is no more. Then suddenly there is a great light - out of understanding, out of penetration, out of witnessing, with no effort, with no will, with no conclusion that it should be like this or should be like that. And this awareness has beauty and benediction.
You feel anger, you feel jealousy, you feel hatred, you feel lust. There is only one way to jump out of their power over you, and that is to understand that to be caught up in them is to be stupid. Watch anger in all its phases, be alert to it so it does not catch you unawares; remain watchful, seeing every step of the anger. And you will see that as awareness about the ways of anger grows, the anger starts evaporating.
And when the anger disappears, there is a peace. Peace is not a positive achievement. When the hatred disappears, there is love. Love is not a positive achievement. When jealousy disappears, there is a deep friendliness towards all.
You have to remember continuously, because the struggle is long, and the journey is arduous. Many times you will forget, many times you will start judging. Many times you will find yourself getting identified with this or that, the ego will assert itself again and again. Whenever the ego asserts itself, whenever identification happens, whenever judgment arises, immediately remember: watch, simply watch, and there will be understanding.
And understanding is the secret of transformation. If you can understand anger, immediately you will be showered with compassion.
Somebody says something and there is anger. There is not even a single moment's gap. It is as if you are just a mechanism - somebody pushes a button and you lose your temper. Just as if you push the button and the fan starts moving or the light goes on. The fan never thinks whether to move or not to move; it immediately moves. Somebody insults and you immediately react – you are simply controlled by his insult. This is unconsciousness, this is mindlessness.
Gurdjieff said that a small thing transformed his life completely. His father was dying and he called the boy - Gurdjieff was only nine years old - and said, 'I have nothing much to give you, except an advice I got from my father on his deathbed, and it has tremendously benefited me. You are perhaps too young to understand it right now, so just remember it. Whenever you can understand, it will be helpful. The advice is that whenever you feel angry, wait for twenty-four hours. Then do whatever you want to do. If somebody insults you, tell him, "I will come after twenty-four hours. Please give me a little time to think it over."'
Gurdjieff followed the advice, and by and by became aware of its tremendous impact. He was completely transformed. Two things he had to remember - one, he had to be aware and alert not to move into anger when somebody was insulting him, not to allow himself to be manipulated by the other – and he had to wait for twenty-four hours. By and by he became capable of it, and then he understood - after twenty-four hours you cannot be angry. Either it is instant, or it is not. Because anger functions only if you are unconscious. If you have this much consciousness, that you can wait for twenty-four hours, or even just twenty four seconds, then you cannot be angry. Then you have missed the moment, then the anger is finished. Even twenty-four seconds will do - try it.
Reaction is dominated by the other person. He insults you: you get angry, and then you act out of anger. This is reaction. You are not an independent person; anybody can pull you this way or that way. You are easily affected; you can be blackmailed emotionally. You were not angry. The man insulted you, and his insult created anger; now out of anger comes your action.
Response is out of freedom. It is not dependent on the other person. The other person may insult you, but you don't become angry; on the contrary you meditate on the fact - why is he insulting you? Perhaps he is right. Then you have to be grateful to him, instead of getting angry. Perhaps he is wrong. If he is wrong, then for his wrong why should you burn your heart with anger? But whether he is right or wrong, in either case anger is irrelevant. If he is right - and that you can see only if there is no anger in you, because anger clouds the vision, the clarity - if you see he is right, you will be grateful to him, because he was favoring you by telling a truth about you which nobody has told you. Perhaps he was saying that you are a coward... you take his statement and enquire within yourself, and you find the coward.
So when somebody says anything to you, ponder over it. Tell the person, "Please wait for ten minutes. Let me think about it - perhaps you are right." If he is right, be grateful. If he is wrong, then feel sorry for him and tell him, "You have a wrong idea. You are master of your own ideas - you can have this idea - but from my side, just a humble suggestion that the idea is not right. I would love it if you would give it a little more consideration."
Response is very silent, very peaceful. It is not dependent on the other person; it is your own understanding, acting spontaneously in the moment.
For example, you are sad. Your conditioning, your mind, says, "You should not be sad. This is bad. You have to be happy." Thus comes the division, the problem. You are sad: that is the truth of this moment. And your mind says, "You should not be like this, smile. What will people think of you?"
How can you know yourself if you don't accept yourself? If you are always repressing your being? When you are sad, accept the sadness: this is you in that moment. Don't say "I am sad." Don't say that sadness is something separate from you. Simply say, "I am sadness in this moment." And live your sadness in total authenticity.
And you will be surprised - if you can live your sadness with no ideal of being happy or anything else, you become happy immediately, because the division in you disappears. There is no effort, no conflict. "I am simply this," and there is relaxation. And in that relaxation is grace, is joy.
I am not saying try to be happy; I am not saying, "Accept your sadness so that you can become happy". If that is your motivation then nothing will happen; you are still struggling. You will be watching from the corner of your eye: "So much time has passed and I have accepted sadness, and I am saying 'I am sadness’, and joy is still not coming.” It will not come that way.
Joy is not a goal, it is a by-product. It is a natural consequence of unity. Just be united with this sadness, with no motivation, for no particular purpose. This is how you are this moment, this is your truth this moment. And next moment you may be angry: accept that too. And next moment you may be something else: accept that too.
If you can live moment to moment, with tremendous acceptance, without creating any division, you are on the way towards self-knowledge.
You can come to know yourself by dropping the division inside. You are against yourself. Drop all ideals which create this antagonism in you. You are the way you are: accept it with joy, with gratitude. And suddenly a harmony will be felt. The two selves in you, the ideal self and the real self, will not be there to fight any more It is not really sadness that gives you pain. It is the interpretation that sadness is wrong that gives you pain, and that becomes a psychological problem. It is not anger that is painful; it is the idea that anger is wrong that creates psychological anxiety. It is the interpretation, not the fact. The fact is always liberating.
If you try not to be angry, you will repress anger. That misses the point
In transcendence you don't repress anger and you don't express it either.
The third approach, the approach of all the enlightened people, is neither to express nor repress, but watch. When anger arises, sit silently, let the anger surround you, let the cloud surround you, you are in your inner world, a silent watcher. Seeing, that this is anger. Buddha said to his disciples: When anger arises, listen to it, listen to its message. And keep alert, don't fall asleep. Keep alert that anger is surrounding you. You are not it. You are the watcher of it.
Slowly slowly, watching, you become so separate from it that it cannot affect you. And you become so detached from it and so aloof and so cool and so far away, and the distance is such that it doesn't seem to matter at all. In fact, you will start laughing at all the ridiculous things that you have been doing in the past because of this anger. It is not you. It is there, outside you. It is surrounding you. But the moment you are disidentified from it, you will not pour your energy into it.
Make your understanding more focused. Bring all your energy to understand the phenomenon of your being, your ego, your mind, your unconscious. Become more and more alert. Whatever happens, try to understand it. Somebody insults you and you feel anger. Don't miss this opportunity; try to understand why this anger. And don't make it a philosophical thing. Anger is happening to you - it is an experience, a live experience. Focus your whole attention on it and try to understand why it is happening to you, from where it is coming, where the roots are, how it happens, how it functions, how it overpowers you, how in anger you become mad. add a new element - the element of understanding - and then the quality will change.
By and by, you will see that the more you understand anger, the less it happens. And when you understand it perfectly, it disappears. Understanding is like heat. When the heat comes to a particular point - one hundred degrees - the water disappears. And this is my criterion: if something disappears through understanding, it is sin; if through understanding it deepens, it is virtue. The more you understand, the wrong will disappear and the right will become more rooted. Sex will disappear and love will deepen. Anger will disappear and compassion will deepen. Greed will disappear, sharing will deepen.
What do I mean by understanding? Do not fight with the mind. Anger is there: do not be angry against anger, do not fight anger. Rather, try to understand what anger is, what this energy is, why it comes, what the cause of it is, the origin, and where the source is. Meditate upon anger, and the more you become aware of it, the less and less anger will come to you. And when there is no anger, you are thrown into your inner silence.
Whatever you are doing, do it with full awareness. If you are angry, then be angry with awareness.
If you repress, you will take your revenge somewhere or other
If you understand, anger disappears and the same energy becomes compassion. Not that you sublimate: anger simply disappears, and the energy that was involved, invested in anger, is released and becomes compassion. When you understand hate, hate disappears and the same energy becomes love. Love is not against hate - it is absence of hate.
Religious people go on conditioning you: love your enemies; wherever you feel hatred, repress it and show love. I say: Wherever you feel hatred, become aware
I don't teach you to sublimate. I simply teach one thing - understanding. Understand anger, watch anger, become aware of anger. Don't do anything; just let it be there in front of you. Look deep into it, and suddenly you will see that just by looking into it, a transformation starts happening. Just by observation, anger starts changing into compassion. There is the key. Nothing has to be done - awareness alone does everything for you.
Why not judge? Because when you judge, you are identifying with the unconscious emotion. Whether you are against it or for it, doesn’t matter – if you are saying yes or no to it, it has already taken possession of you.
Just don't say anything. See if you can remain alert when anger arises, sex arises, greed arises, just simply taking note of it, that it is there, with no judgment. This is the key.
If you can understand the whole process of anger and hate, in the very process of understanding, it disappears, because a basic ingredient to be angry and to be hateful is to be ignorant about it, to be unaware about it. So whenever you are not alert, you can be angry. When you are alert, you cannot be angry. The alertness absorbs all the energy which would become anger.
How can such a simple thing as awareness work?
When you are angry you say, "I am angry." That is the root. If you are really aware when you are angry, you will say, "I am seeing anger passing through my mind." If you can say that, the identity is cut.
Nothing else is needed. You don't have to change your anger, you don't have to change your greed, you don't have to change anything. You have simply to be alert and aware. And all the projections of greed, all the projections of anger, of delusion, will evaporate - just the way, every morning, your dreams evaporate. They are made of the same stuff as dreams are made of.
The moment you are aware, the mind becomes silent. And all actions, good or bad, are created only by the mind. They are just like a film that you are seeing on the screen of the mind. Once you wake up, the film disappears. Suddenly there is a blank screen ...utterly silent, nothing moving, absolute stillness.
If you act out of awareness, you really don't ‘do’ anything, things start happening by themselves. You see something is wrong; it drops, it simply drops. You don't have to make any effort. You see the ugliness of anger, and anger evaporates; the very seeing becomes the transformation. You understand your desire and the futility of your desire - that it cannot be fulfilled, that it is unfulfillable, that you are in a vicious circle. Seeing that you are moving in circles, you jump out.
Don’t get caught up in what you should or shouldn’t do.
And this is how one should relate to all kinds of negative emotions. Be a witness. Just watch it. Don't do anything. Doing is not needed. If you do anything about it, something is going to be wrong - because you will be doing it under its impact. If you do it to others, it will be wrong; if you do to yourself, it will be wrong. Anything done under the impact of a negative emotion is going to be wrong. And then later on guilt will arise.
But there is a way not to do anything - be a watcher, just be a witness. See it. It is there. You are not it, you are the watcher. Sit silently when you are angry, when you are jealous, when you are full of hatred. Close your doors. Sit silently. Let the anger be there, let the anger flash in front of you, let the hatred run like a movie - and you be a watcher.
And you will be surprised. It cannot be there forever. Sooner or later it goes. It only takes minutes to go. And when it is gone, it is gone; it leaves no trace behind it. No guilt is created.
It is the influence of others that makes you fight yourself. Find your own conclusions
Why do you think about renouncing anger? Because you have been taught that anger is bad, and you are influenced by what others say. But have you understood it as bad? Haveyou come to a personal conclusion, through your own deepening insight, that anger is bad? If you have come to this conclusion through your own inner search, there will be no need to quit it - it will have already disappeared. The very fact of knowing that this is poisonous, is enough.
Everyone is creating misery around themselves because of others. Someone says this is bad and someone says that it is good, and they go on forcing these ideas in your mind. Parents are doing this, society is doing this, and you are just following others' ideas. And the difference between your nature and others' ideas, causes a split; you become schizophrenic. You will do something, but you will believe in the contrary. That will create guilt. Everyone feels guilty because of this mechanism.
Everyone has told you that anger is bad, but no one has told you how to know what anger is. So remain with your facts, try to know them. Don’t allow society to force its ideology on you. Don’t look at yourself through others' eyes. You have eyes; you are not blind. And don’t think of renouncing anything. Renunciation means you are being forced by others. Be individual. Don’t be a slave to society. You have eyes, you have consciousness, you have sex, anger and other facts.
Use your consciousness, use your eyes. Be aware.
Think of yourself as if you are alone – there is no one to teach you. Start from the very beginning, from ABC, and go inside. Be totally aware. Don’t be in haste to draw conclusions. If you can reach a conclusion through your own awareness, that very conclusion will become a transformation. Then there will be no repression. And only then can you quit anything.
Do not make awareness a technique to quit - you can be aware and not quit
I am not saying be aware in order to quit. I am saying: if you are aware, things quit by themselves.
Quitting is just a consequence. If you are aware you can quit anything, but there is also no need. Sex is there - if you become fully aware of it, you may decide not to quit it. If with full awareness you decide not to quit it, then sex has its own beauty. Whatever happens through awareness is beautiful, and whatever happens without awareness is ugly.
So do not fall into any pattern. No one knows what will happen when you become aware. Don’t decide before becoming aware that you are going to quit this and that. Wait. Be aware, and let your being flower. No one knows what will happen. With everyone there is an unknown possibility of flowering. And you need not follow anyone else.
You have a certain ego: that ego goes on condemning cowardice. It is because of that condemnation and interpretation that pain arises. And the cowardice is there, so it becomes a wound. You cannot accept it, and you cannot destroy it by rejecting it. Again and again it will erupt, again and again it will disrupt your peace. Sooner or later you will have to cope with it.
Only when the mind recoils from a fact or reality, is there pain. You are recoiling from the facts of cowardice, fear, anger and sadness. Psychological pain is part and parcel of the process of escape and resistance. Pain is not inherent in any feeling, but arises only after the intent to reject it arises. The moment you decide to reject something, pain arises.
Watch it inside yourself, become a great experimental lab. Just see: you are feeling fear. It is dark and you are alone, and for miles there is nobody. You are lost in a jungle, sitting under a tree on a dark night, and lions are roaring – and fear is there. You can reject the fear, and hold yourself tight so you don't start trembling. Then the fear becomes a painful thing: it is there and it hurts. Alternatively, you can enjoy it. Tremble. Let it become a meditation. It is natural – lions are roaring, the night is dark, danger is close by, death can happen any moment. Enjoy it. Let the trembling become a dance. Once you accept it then trembling is a dance. Cooperate with the trembling and you will be surprised: if you cooperate with the trembling, if you become the trembling, all pain disappears.
In fact, if you tremble, instead of pain you will find a great upsurge of energy arising in you. That's exactly what the body wanted to do. Trembling is a chemical process: it releases energy, it prepares you to fight or take flight. It gives you a great sudden upsurge – it is an emergency measure. The body is releasing chemicals into the blood, it is preparing you to face some danger. Maybe you will need to have a fight, or maybe you will have to run away and take flight. Both will need energy.
See the beauty of fear, see the alchemical work of fear. It is simply trying to prepare you for the situation so that you can accept the challenge. But rather than accepting the challenge, rather than understanding fear, you start rejecting it. you try and control it. Then you are creating a contradiction. Your natural process is that of fear, and you are bringing in an unnatural process to contradict fear. You are bringing ideals to interfere in the natural process. There will be pain, because there will be conflict.
Don't bother to be ‘strong’. The truth is that right now, fear is there. Listen to this moment, and allow this moment to possess you. And then there is no pain. Then the fear is a subtle dance of energies in you. And it prepares you – it is a friend, it is not your enemy. But your interpretations go on doing something wrong to you. They create a split. This split that you create between the feeling – the fear, the anger – and yourself, makes you become two. This duality creates pain.
To help you be clear in this process, don't say, "I am feeling fear,” "I am afraid". Simply say, "I am fear. In this moment I am fear." When you say, "I am feeling fear" you are keeping yourself separate from the feeling. You are there somewhere far away, and the feeling is around you. This is the basic disunity. Say, "I am fear." And watch – that's actually the case - when the fear is there, you are fear. It is not that sometimes you feel love. When love is really there, you are love. And when anger is there, you are anger. Don't create this division of subject and object. This is the root cause of all misery, of all split.
Choice-less awareness
Don’t judge good or bad; don’t label, or have any kind of desire or goal in regard to what arises in your consciousness. Don’t avoid, resist, condemn, justify, distort or be attached in regard to what arises. Just let there be a choiceless awareness. Then you can see yourself clearly.
A choiceless awareness: that is the ultimate key to open the innermost mystery of your being.
Don't say it is good, don't say it is bad. When you say something is good, attachment arises, attraction arises. When you say something is bad, repulsion arises. Fear is fear, neither good nor bad. Don't evaluate, just let it be so. If you can be there without condemnation or justification, then in that choice-less awareness all psychological pain simply evaporates like dewdrops in the early morning sun. And left behind is a pure space. This one that is left behind when all pain disappears, when you are not divided in any way, when the observer has become the observed, this is the experience of samadhi, or whatever you want to call it.
And in this state there is no self as such, because there is no observer-controller-judger. You are only that which arises and changes from moment to moment. Some moments it may be elation, other moments it may be sadness, tenderness, destructiveness, fear, loneliness, et cetera. So don’t say, "I am sad," or "I have sadness," but rather, "I am sadness" – because the first two statements imply a self separate from that which is. In reality there is no other self to whom the feeling is happening. There is only the feeling.
There is no ‘you’ feeling fear; you are fear in a certain moment. In certain other moments you are not fear, but you are not separate from the moment, from whatever is there. There is only the feeling itself. Thus, nothing can be done about what is arising in the moment. There is nobody to do anything. So this communion with pain does not bring greater pain, it actually brings liberation and joy. In fact, consciousness in communion with anything, not just psychological pain, yields peace and joy.
Be aware – deep down you are really attached to your negative emotions. They are your ego.
If you look closely at people’s faces when they are talking about their problems, their illnesses, you will see they are enjoying it. If they had no problem, what will they enjoy then? If all their illnesses disappear and they are completely whole and healthy, there will be nothing for them to talk about.
People feel so happy about their misery. If they manage to come out of one problem, the next day they have already found something else... as if there is a deep clinging to misery. They are getting something out of it, it is an investment. The investment is that only with a miserable mind can the ‘I’ exist; the ‘I’ is nothing but a combination of all your miseries. So only if you are really ready to drop the ‘I’, will your miseries disappear. Otherwise you will go on creating new miseries. You are on a path which is self-destructive, self-defeating.
You are creating your own hell
If you are negative, you have continuously to take the decision to remain negative. How the negativity was created is irrelevant, it is meaningless. It has happened; it is a given fact now, that you are negative, that you.don't have any positive flowing energy. You have just a closing energy, which closes up on you, caves in upon you; and you have no door to move out from. The sky is lost, and you live in a dark cave. It is irrelevant how it happened: there is no need to go into the past. I am telling you this is the foundation of Eastern esoteric psychology, that a man, whatever he is, has continuously to decide to be that way - only then can he remain that way.
If you feel negative, that means somehow or other, knowingly or unknowingly, you have invested much in your negativity. Now you want to cling to it; you don't want to drop it. If you are miserly, you want to cling to it; you don't want to drop it. See the point. If you want to drop it, I say to you, "Immediately! This very moment!" Nobody is blocking the path. But you don't want to drop it; and you don't want to realize the fact that you don't want.
Then you play a trick. You say, "I want to drop it, but how can? My mother gave me the whole negative attitude towards life." So you hate yourself for being negative, and you hate your mother because she has made you that way. Nobody has made you that way, nobody is responsible. Don't play these games. You are responsible. It may look like a burden I am putting on you. But if you look deeply, you will feel that this is the only possibility for your freedom. If you are responsible, only then can you be free. If others are responsible, how can you be free? If you are 'caused', you are 'caused' by others; then you can never be free, then you are just like a rock. But I tell you: you are free. Your nature is freedom. You can be free, because you are free. Realize this, this moment, and nobody is blocking the way - there is no barrier, no wall.
But if you don't want to become free, don't think that you want to become free. People talk about freedom, but they want to remain in bondage, because bondage has its own comforts, securities, conveniences. Freedom is risky. Miserliness has its own conveniences, otherwise nobody would be a miser. If you are not a miser, you become more insecure. If you cling to money, to things, you feel a certain security: at least there is something to ding to; you don't feel empty. Maybe you are full of rubbish; but at least something is there, you are not empty.
You go on clinging. With negativity you feel powerful. Whenever you say no, you feel powerful; the ego is enhanced. Whenever you say yes, you feel humble; the ego is destroyed. That's why you don't want to say yes, and you go on saying no. When you love, you become humble; when you are angry, you become powerful. Have you watched? When you are angry, you have four times more energy than you ordinarily have. In anger, in rage, you can throw a rock, a big rock. Ordinarily, if somebody tells you to, you cannot even push it, you cannot even move it. When you are angry, you have much power. When you are loving, all power disappears. Love is fragile like a flower. Hatred is powerful like a sword. So whenever you are negative, you feel powerful. And if you still want to feel powerful, you will cling to your negativity. Don't throw the responsibility on to your poor mother - because that is absurd.
All negative emotions need energy – they drain you. Positive energies create more energy
Go inwards and inquire, and you will feel: all your miseries exist because you support them. Without your support nothing can exist. Because you give it energy, then it exists; if you don't give it energy it cannot exist. And who is forcing you to give it energy? Even when you are sad, energy is needed, because without energy you cannot be sad. To make sadness happen, you have to give energy. That's why after sadness you feel so dissipated, drained.
All negative emotions need energy, they drain you. And all positive emotions and positive
attitudes are dynamos of energy; they create more energy, they never drain you. If you are happy, suddenly the whole world flows towards you with energy, the whole world laughs with you. When you are positive the whole existence goes on giving you more, because when you are happy, the whole existence is happy with you. You are not a burden, you are a flower. The whole existence feels happy about you.
When you are like a rock, sitting dead with your sadness, nursing your sadness, nobody is with you. Nobody can be with you. There simply comes a gap between you and life. Then whatever you are doing, you have to depend on your own energy source. It will be dissipated, you are wasting your energy, you are being drained by your own nonsense.
But one thing is there, the investment; when you are sad and negative you will feel more ego. When you are happy, blissful, ecstatic, you will not feel the ego. When you are happy and ecstatic there is no I. You are bridged with existence, not broken apart - you are together. When you are sad, angry, greedy, moving just within yourself and enjoying your wounds, running them again and again, playing with them, trying to be a martyr, then there is a gap between you and existence. You are left alone, and there you will feel ‘I’. And when you feel I, the whole existence appears unfriendly to you. And if you see that everybody is the enemy, you will behave in such a way that everybody has to be the enemy.
All our conflicting emotions are forms of the same energy
Until we are able to understand that all our conflicting emotions are forms of the same energy, we will not be able to solve our problems. The greatest problem that confronts us is that when we love, we also hate. We are ready to kill the very person we can’t live without. Our friend is also our enemy, deep within. This is our greatest problem in relationships. You have to understand that the underlying energy in the different emotions is the same; there is no difference at all.
For example, cold and heat are not two different things; they are relative experiences. If we call something cold, it only means that we are warmer, and visa versa. When we call something warm, it only means we are colder: we are simply expressing the quantitative difference of temperature between that object and ourselves - nothing else. Hot and cold are poetic words. For science, they convey nothing. If a man enters a room and says it is cold we cannot know what he means. It is possible that he has fever and the room feels cold to him, though it is not at all cold. Therefore, until he knows the condition of his body temperature, his assessment of the temperature of the room is meaningless. So we can say, "Do not comment upon whether the room is hot or cold. Just say the temperature of the room." The degree gives no indication of hot or cold, it only informs you what the temperature is. If the temperature is less than your body temperature you will feel cold; if it is more you will feel hot.
The vibrations of love and hate are like those of heat and cold: they have their own ratio. So in meditation you will become aware it is not a matter of your own choice whether to love or to hate - these are two names of the same thing. Love is one form of the vibration of hate. In fact, love is the form that is pleasing to you, whereas hate is that form of the same vibrations which is displeasing to you.
When you realize that what you had looked upon as two opposites, are one and the same, you will laugh at your stupidity for trying to destroy one in order to keep the other.
Use your energy creatively
Do you know how much energy is triggered within someone when he gets angry? Use this energy creatively – start doing something solely for the joy it gives you. Redirect your emotions this way, and give your ordinary life a creative direction. Make a garden, polish a stone and make a statue out of it, write a small song, hug a stranger … The more creative you are, the more your anger will disappear.
Energy is always neutral. The energy created by anger is not destructive per se, it is destructive only because it is being used in the form of anger. Make better use of it.
Creative
Sex is the lowest form of creativity, just the seed of creativity. Once the seed has dissolved, has been absorbed, your whole being comes creative. And to be creative is to be blissful. I am not saying that unless you paint and write poetry you will not be a creator. Buddha did not paint, did not write any poetry, but his whole life was of creativity. He created a great energy-field, a buddhafield, and whoever entered that field was transformed. That is his creativity. He did not write any poetry. But the way he walks is poetry, the way he looks at people is poetry. He never danced. But if you watch, there is a great dance happening in him. It is a subtle, invisible dance. It is not of the physical, it is a spiritual dance. He is not separate from existence. So he is dancing with the trees in the wind, and he is dancing with the stars, and he is dancing with the whole. He is not separate any more.
If you repress sex, creativity disappears. If you accept sex, it is transformed into creativity. If you accept anger, it releases great vitality and passion in you. Your life becomes a passionate life. It is then a life of involvement, commitment and participation.
Acceptance from your own understanding is not an effort.
Acceptance should be simple. It should be spontaneous; and it should not be out of any ideology, out of teachings, scriptures. It should be out of your understanding. Then there is no question of total or non-total acceptance. When it is your own understanding, even the word `acceptance' becomes futile.
Do you love with effort? Are you compassionate with effort? Are you living with effort, breathing with effort? Is there any effort in your heartbeats? Just the same way, the whole of life is a spontaneous flow. Your perception, your clarity decides which direction to move. But there is no effort, because effort implies you are divided - one part of you is trying to take you in one direction, another part is trying to take you in another direction. A man of effort can ever be in tune with existence. With whom are you fighting? Effort is a fight.
ACCEPTING YOURSELF Acceptance means accepting yourself, as you are
I don't give any discipline, any commandments. I don't want you to be anyone other than you are. It is perfectly beautiful the way you are. No trees are making any effort. Small bushes are perfectly happy with being small. Tall cedars of Lebanon are perfectly happy with their height. They don’t compare - they don't look at the small bushes as inferior - that is just how they are. In this relaxedness comes a shadow, silently, without even the sound of footsteps - acceptance.
So don't ask about total acceptance - ask rather about more clarity, more spontaneity, more naturalness, and then acceptance will come just like a shadow. You don't have to bother about it. Life is, intrinsically, a tremendous acceptance without your knowing. Have you accepted your eyes totally? Have you accepted your body totally? Have you accepted your situation in life totally? This idea of total acceptance imposed on you makes you miserable, because it continuously creates comparison. Somebody has more beautiful eyes and somebody has a stronger body. Somebody is more knowledgeable. Then you always feel inferior, and this inferiority goes on eating your heart. You become more and more miserable, but you have created it. There is no need to compare, because there is nobody you can be compared with.
You are a unique creation
You are a unique individual. And whatever you are, that's the way existence wants you to be. Enjoy it. Existence created you because it loves you, it loved you so much that it couldn’t resist the temptation to create you. There has never been anyone else just exactly the same as you, and there never will be. Without you this existence will not be the same, there will be a hole. Without you this universe will lose some poetry, some beauty: a song will be missed, a note will be missed, there will be a gap. Existence loves you, otherwise you would not be here.
So don't try to be anything else. That is the disease called man: always to become somebody, to be some other place, always rejecting that which is, and always hankering for that which is not. A wants to become B; B wants to become C. Then the fever of becoming is created. You are not a becoming; you are a being. You are already that which you can be, which you ever can be - you are already that. Nothing more can be done about you; you are a finished product. When existence creates, how can you improve upon it? The whole idea is absurd. You are trying to improve upon existence; you cannot improve. You can be miserable, that's all. And you can suffer unnecessarily.
You are perfect. Nothing else is needed. But the mind will say, sooner or later, to be something else, to become something. The mind doesn't allow you to be. The mind is becoming, and your soul is being. Society has given you ideals of how you should be. And it has enforced those ideals so deeply in you, that you are always interested in "how I should be", and you have forgotten who you are. You are obsessed with the future ideal and you have forgotten the present reality. You are constantly thinking of what to do, how to do it, how to be this. Your language has become that of shoulds and oughts, and the reality consists only of is.
If each individual is authentic just as he is intended by nature to be, all the problems of the world will disappear
Existence gives you such a unique individuality - rejoice in it. And out of that rejoicing, acceptance will come. Once you start rejoicing whatever you are, life takes such psychedelic colors, each moment becomes so juicy... your whole life becomes a celebration.
Don’t even think, "I accept myself." Just rejoice, dance, sing. Let the whole world know that you are alone and unique and nobody can replace you. The day humanity is rejoicing in itself, politicians, religions, saints, and so-called moralists will all disappear. These are people who are trying to hide their inferiority by becoming something, or at least pretending something. They are all hypocrites. And a world without these kind of people, without the so-called learned people, will be such a peaceful world. There is no need for war, there is no need for nations. There is no need for anybody to pretend to be higher, there is no need for anybody to suffer a wound of inferiority.
If each individual is authentic just as he is intended by nature to be, all the problems of the world will disappear. Problems are created by schizophrenics, neurotics, psychotics... all kinds of madmen are posing as the richest, as the most powerful. If man accepts whatever he is, and uses his capacities for creativity - and everybody is born with certain capacities, certain talents, a certain creativity - he will be immensely happy in being nobody. You don't have to be happy only if you become the richest man or the most powerful man. These are the childish ways of primitive man.
You cannot be anything other than you are
A rose flower is a rose flower, there is no question of its being something else. And the lotus is a lotus. Neither does the rose ever try to become a lotus, nor does the lotus ever try to become a rose. Hence they are not neurotics. They don't need the psychiatrist, they don't need any psychoanalysis. The rose is healthy because the rose simply lives its reality. And so it is with the whole existence except man. Only man has ideals and shoulds. "You should be this and that" .Then you are divided against your own ‘is’. And you cannot be anything other than you are. Let it sink deep into your heart: you can only be that which you are, never anything else. Once this truth sinks deep, that "I can only be myself", all ideals disappear. They are discarded automatically. And when there is no ideal, reality is encountered. Then your eyes are herenow, then you are present to what you are.
Accept yourself as you are, means drop all shoulds. You are not to be somebody else; you are just to be yourself. Relax, and just be yourself. Be respectful to your individuality. And have the courage to sign your own signature. Don't go on copying others signatures. You are not expected to become a Jesus or a Buddha or a Ramakrishna - you are simply expected to become yourself. When you are not trying to become anybody else, then a grace arises. Then you are full of grandeur, splendor, harmony - because then there is no conflict. Nothing to enforce upon yourself. You become innocent. In that innocence you will feel compassion and love for yourself. You will feel so happy with yourself that even if existence comes and knocks at your door and says, "Would you like to become somebody else?" you will say, "Have you gone mad?! I am perfect! Thank-you, but never try anything like that - I am perfect as I am."
Denying yourself, you deny your creator. If you go and see a painting of Picasso's and you say, "This is wrong and that is wrong, and this color should have been this way," you are denying Picasso. The moment you say, "I should be like this," you are trying to improve upon existence. You are saying, "You committed blunders - I should have been like this, and you have made me like this?" You are trying to improve upon existence. It is not possible. You are doomed to failure. And the more you fail, the more you hate. The more you fail, the more you feel condemned. The more you fail, the more you feel yourself impotent. And out of this hatred, impotency, how can compassion arise? Compassion arises when you are perfectly grounded in your being. You say, "Yes, this is the way I am." You have no ideals to fulfill. And immediately fulfillment starts happening. The roses bloom so beautifully because they are not trying to become lotuses. Everything in nature goes so beautifully in accord, because nobody is trying to compete with anybody, nobody is trying to become anybody else. Everything is the way it is. So just be yourself, and remember you cannot be anything else, whatever you do. You can reject yourself and remain the same; condemning, you can remain the same. Or, accepting, enjoying, delighting, you can be the same. Your attitude can be different, but you are going to remain the way you are, the person you are.
Stop trying to be perfect
You are against yourself when you impose ideals, standards on yourself. This creates antagonism in you. You are the way you are: accept it with joy, with gratitude. And suddenly a harmony will be felt. The two selves, the ideal self and the real self, will not be there to fight any more. They will meet and merge into one.
It is not really sadness that gives you pain. It is the interpretation that sadness is wrong that gives you pain, and that becomes a psychological problem. It is not anger that is painful; it is the idea that anger is wrong that creates psychological anxiety. It is the interpretation, not the fact. The fact is always liberating. ….
You are just carrying false ideals; they are creating the trouble. Drop the ideals: be a natural being. Just like trees and animals and birds, accept your being as you are. And a great silence arises. There is no interpretation: then sadness is beautiful, it has depth. Then anger too is beautiful it has life and vitality. Then sex too is beautiful, because it has creativity. When there is no interpretation, all is beautiful. When all is beautiful, you are relaxed. In that relaxation you have fallen into your own source, and that brings self-knowledge, inner transformation.
I am not giving you any ideal about how you have to be; I am not saying that you have to transform from what you are and become somebody else. You have simply to relax into whatever you are, and just see. It is liberating. A great harmony, a great music is heard. That music is of self-knowledge. And your life starts changing. You then have a magic key which unlocks all the locks. If you accept sadness, sadness will disappear. How long can you be sad if you accept sadness? If you are capable of accepting sadness you will be capable of absorbing it in your being; it will become your depth.
And how long will you be able to be angry if you accept anger? Anger feeds on rejection. If you accept it, you have absorbed the energy. Anger has great energy in it, vitality, and when that energy is absorbed you become more vital. Your life then has a passion to it, it is a flame. It is not a dull insipid life; it has intelligence and passion and sharpness. And if you have accepted sex, one day sex disappears too. And it releases great creativity in you, because sex is the potential of creativity. And then you become a creator. Anything and everything is possible then.
If you accept sex, sex is transformed into creativity. If you accept anger, it releases great vitality and passion in you. Your life becomes a passionate life, a life of involvement, commitment and participation. Then you are not just a spectator, then you are in the thick of things, in the dance of life, part of it. Then you are not an escapist; you live joyously and totally. Then you contribute something to existence. Then you are not futile, you have some meaning. When you don't reject anything, all energies are yours, you are enriched. Then you have tremendous energy. And that tremendous energy is you, that energy is delight.
Acceptance is not resignation
Acceptance is not something that you have to do, because what else to do. There are more beautiful people, there are richer people, there are stronger people, what to do? Accept. My idea of acceptance is totally different. You are just yourself and there is not a single person - either in the present or in the past or in the future - who is exactly like you. Existence gives you such a unique individuality - rejoice in it. And out of that rejoicing, acceptance will come; you don’t have to bother about it.
So drop any idea that you ‘should’ accept yourself. Rejoice. Dance. Sing Let the whole world know that you are alone and unique and nobody can replace you. There is no comparison - there is no need. You are a unique individual. And whatever you are, that's the way existence wants you to be. Enjoy it. There is no need to compare, because there is nobody you can be compared with.
Don’t carry ideals about how you should be – they create the problem, the misery
The first step towards bliss is to be one. So whatever is experientially real, accept it. You cannot do anything by denying it. By denying it you create the problem. You feel a coward – so what? So, "I am a coward." If you can accept cowardice, you have already become brave. Only a brave person can accept the fact of being a coward, no coward can do that. You are already on the way to transformation. So don’t deny anything that is experienced as a fact – accept it is real.
To do that, first your consciousness needs to dis-identify from all the fixed conceptual selves with which it is identified. If you have a certain idea of how you should be, then you cannot accept the experiential truths of your being. If you have the idea that you should be brave, that bravery is a value, then it is difficult to accept your cowardice. If you have the idea that you have to be a buddha-like person, absolutely compassionate, then you cannot accept your anger. It is the ideal that creates the problem.
If you don't have any ideals then there is no problem at all. You are a coward, so you are a coward. And because there is no ideal of being a brave man, you don't condemn the fact – you don't reject it, you don't repress it, you don't throw it into the unconscious basement of your being so that there is no need for you ever to look at it.
And anything that you throw into your unconscious will continue to function from there, it will go on creating problems for you. If a wound comes to the surface it is good, it is on the way to being healed, because it is only on the surface that it will be in contact with fresh air and the sun and can be healed. If you force it inwards, if you don't allow it to come to the surface, then it is going to become a cancer.
But repression is natural if you have some ideal. Any ideal will do. If you have the ideal of being a celibate, a brahmachari, then sex becomes the problem. You can't watch it. If you don't have the ideal of becoming a celibate, then sex is not rejected. Then there is no division between you and your sexuality. Then there is communion, and that communion brings joy. Self-communion is the base of all joy.
So don't carry ideals. Ideals create hypocrisy. If all ideals disappear there will be no hypocrisy. How can hypocrisy exist? It is the shadow of the ideal. And the more ideals you have, the more you will suffer and the more hypocritical you will be, because if you cannot fulfill the ideals then at least you have to pretend. That's how hypocrisy comes in.
The world will not be hypocritical at all if we accept experiential facts without any judgment. Whatever is, is, whether it is cowardice or anger or jealousy. If we live with the is-ness of existence and not with the oughts and the shoulds, how can hypocrisy arise?
I have no ideals, so I cannot be a hypocrite
You cannot accuse me of being a hypocrite, because I have no ideals. I teach to live as beautifully as possible. If I was teaching to live in poverty, and I was living in a palace, that would be hypocrisy. But poverty is not my goal. My whole approach towards life is that of total acceptance, of celebration, not of renunciation. I live naturally – and it is very natural to live in comfort and convenience. It is simply stupid, if comfort is available, not to live in it. If it is not available, that is another thing. Then whatever is available, live in it comfortably.
I have lived in many kinds of situations but I have always lived comfortably. When I was a student I used to walk to the university, four miles every day. But I enjoyed it. When I was a professor I used to bicycle to the university; I enjoyed that too. Whether I have had only a bicycle or a Rolls Royce, it doesn't make any difference: I have lived in comfort. Comfort is an attitude of mind, it is an approach towards life. Whatever the moment allows, I have squeezed the moment to its totality. I have drunk fully of the moment, I have never repented and I have never desired for something else; and if something else started happening, I enjoyed that too. It is impossible for me to be a hypocrite, because I have no ideals to fulfill, no oughts, no shoulds. The 'is' is all that is, and I live in it.
So don't carry ideas of how you should be. That creates your problems. If you have the idea to be a brave man then it looks ugly to be a coward. But cowardice is a fact, and the ideal is just an ideal, a fantasy of the mind. Sacrifice fantasies to reality, drop all ideals, and then life starts becoming integrated. All the rejected fragments start coming back home, the repressed starts surfacing. For the first time you start feeling a kind of togetherness; you are no longer falling apart.
For example, if you hold myself to be a "kind" person, you will not be able to permit yourself to recognize and accept angry feelings when they arise, because kind people just don't get angry. To bring a unity in consciousness, you must first drop all fixed ideals and be open to the moment-to-moment experiential reality which arises. Thus some moments you will be angry, then some moments sad, some moments jealous, and some moments joyful. Moment-to-moment, whatever happens is accepted. Then you become one.
My purpose here, my function here, is to take all ideals away from you. You have come here with ideals; you would like me to enhance your ideals, you would like me to support you and help you to become that which you want to become. That may be your motivation in coming here, but that is not my work here. My work is just the opposite: to help you to accept that which is already the case and to forget all about your fantasies. I want you to become more realistic and pragmatic. I want you to have roots in the earth, and you are hankering for the sky and have completely forgotten the earth.
The sky is also available, but only to those whose roots have gone deep into the earth. The first thing is to send roots into the earth, the second thing happens of its own accord. The deeper the roots go, the higher the tree goes; there is no need to do anything else. My effort is to send your roots deep into the soil of truth. And the truth is that which you are. Then suddenly things will start happening: you will start rising. The ideals that you have always tried for and have never been able to achieve, will start happening of their own accord.
If you can accept your reality as it is, in that very acceptance all tension disappears.
Anguish, anxiety, despair – they all simply evaporate. And when there is no anxiety, no tension, no fragmentariness, no division, no schizophrenia then suddenly there is joy, there is love, there is compassion. These are not ideals, these are very natural phenomena. All that is needed is to remove the ideals, because those ideals are functioning as blocks. The more idealistic a person is, the more blocked he is.
As peculiar and contradictory as it may sound, peace is to be found only in the midst of pain and never by struggling against or running away from what is considered to be the negative or painful. Cowardice gives you pain, fear gives you pain, anger gives you pain – these are negative emotions. But peace can be attained only by accepting and absorbing the painful, not by rejecting it. By rejecting it you will become smaller and less powerful, and you will be in a constant inner war, a civil war, in which one hand will fight with the other, in which you will simply dissipate your energy.
Whatever is, is, whether you accept it or not.
Your acceptance or rejection makes no difference at all. That which is, is. If you accept it you have joy arising in you, if you reject it you have pain. But the reality still remains the same. If you have pain, psychological pain: that is your creation because you were not able to accept and absorb something that was arising. You rejected the reality; in rejection you became a prisoner. The truth remains; it does not matter whether you reject it or accept it. It does not change the fact, it changes your psychological reality. And there are two possibilities: either pain or joy, either disease or health. If you reject it there will be disease, discomfort, because you are cutting a chunk of your being away from you; it will leave wounds and scars on you. If you accept, there will be celebration and health and wholeness.
Every desire is a chain
Transformation is not about jumping out of one desire for another desire: to get into heaven, or to avoid hell. Then you are not jumping out of desire; you are only changing one desire for another. But desire is desire. You can change the object, but the nature of desire remains the same.
The very desire to be free keeps you in bondage. Every desire is a chain, an imprisonment. No desire can ever be fulfilled. Only by dropping the desire, its fulfilment happens. The greatest desire in the world is that of inner transformation. The desire for money is nothing compared to it, the desire for more power, prestige, is nothing. The greatest desire is the so-called spiritual desire. And once you are caught in that desire you will remain miserable forever.
Transformation is possible, but not by desiring it. Transformation is possible only by relaxing into that which is, whatever is. Unconditionally accepting yourself brings transformation.
Man is in misery, man is in anguish. Hence everybody is searching for a state of bliss, a state of unity with existence. Man feels alienated, uprooted. Hence the desire is natural – to get roots into existence again, to be green again, to be blossoming again.
To establish that unity, consciousness must first be unified by accepting everything which is experientially real. You feel fear - the fear is an existential reality, it is experienced, it is there. You can reject it: then you repress it, and you will create a wound in your being. You feel cowardice. You can avoid looking at it. But it is a fact, a reality; just by not looking at it, it is not going to disappear. You are behaving like an ostrich: seeing the enemy, the ostrich hides its head in the sand. But by hiding his head in the sand, by closing his eyes, the enemy does not disappear. In fact the ostrich becomes more vulnerable to the enemy. The ostrich is relieved of the fear, but he is more in danger: the enemy is more powerful because it has not been noticed.
And that's what people are doing. You see cowardice in yourself, you try not to notice it. But it is a fact. By not noticing it, you have created a part of your being which you will not be able to see. You have divided yourself into segments. Another day there is something else, anger, and you don't want to accept that there is anger in you. You stop looking at it. Some other day there is greed, and so on and so forth. And whatever you stop looking at, remains. But now you are shrinking. Many more parts of your being become separate from you – you have separated them on your own. And the more fragmentary you are, the more miserable you will be.
Freedom is not an ideal, it is a by-product of accepting whoever you are.
The very idea of getting free, from pain, from negative emotions, is an ideal. Freedom is a by-product; it is not a goal of your endeavor and effort. It is not arrived at by great effort, it happens when you are relaxed and accepting of whoever you are, of whatever is there in you.
If you cannot accept your fear, if you cannot accept your love, if you cannot accept your sadness, how can you be relaxed? This is the basic cause of constant chronic tension. Down the centuries, your so-called religions have been teaching you to reject everything which is wrong: you have to change this, you have to change that, only then will you be acceptable to God. They have created so much rejection that you are not even acceptable to yourself, what to say about God. God, or I prefer to call it existence, already accepts you, that's why you are here. Otherwise you would not be here. You have not to earn acceptance, you are already worthy. So relax, and enjoy the way existence has made you. If he has put cowardice in you, then there must be something in it. Trust and accept it. And what is wrong in being a coward? And what is wrong in being afraid? Only idiots don't feel fear. It helps your life, it protects you. But stupid ideologies have been given to you.
Acceptance has to be unconditional
Whatever you are, unconditionally accept it, and acceptance is the key to transformation. Take note: I am not saying: accept yourself to be transformed – otherwise you have not accepted yourself at all, because deep down the desire is for transformation. You can say, "Okay, if this brings transformation then I will accept myself." But this is not acceptance; you have missed the whole point. You are still desiring transformation. You are using acceptance as a means – the goal is to be transformed, to be free. Where is the acceptance?
Acceptance has to be unconditional, for no reason at all, without any motivation. Only then does it free you. It brings tremendous joy, it brings great freedom, but the freedom does not come as an end. Acceptance itself is another name for freedom. If you have accepted truly, if you have understood what I mean by acceptance, there is freedom – immediately, instantly.
It is not that first you accept yourself, practice acceptance, and then one day there will be freedom – no. Accept yourself, and there is freedom, because psychological pain disappears immediately.
Try it. What I am saying is experimental. You can do it, it is not a question of believing me. You have been fighting with your fear – accept it, and see what happens. Just sit silently and accept it, and say, "I have fear, so I am fear." In that very meditative state, "I am fear," freedom starts descending. When the acceptance is total, freedom has arrived.
