Accept Yourself As You Are
Through so many ways your unconditional acceptance comes to me for the first time in my life. I weep as I write. What is happening?
Prem Samma, life is happening, God is happening. This is what
life is all about. The moment you accept yourself you become open,
you become vulnerable, you become receptive. The moment you accept
yourself then there is no need for any future, because there is no
need to improve upon anything. Then all is good, then all is good as
it is. In that very experience life starts taking a new color, a new
music arises.
If you accept yourself, that is the beginning of accepting all. If
you reject yourself you are basically rejecting the universe; if you
reject yourself you are rejecting God. If you accept yourself you
have accepted God. Then there is nothing else to do but to enjoy, to
celebrate. There is no complaint left, there is no grudge; you feel
grateful. Then life is good and death is good, then joy is good and
sadness is good, then to be with your beloved is good and to be
alone is good. Then whatsoever happens is good, because it happens
out of God.
But you have been conditioned for centuries not to accept yourself.
All the cultures of the world have been poisoning the human mind,
because they all depend on one thing: Improve upon yourself. They
all create anxiety in you - anxiety is the tense state between that
which you are and that which you should be. People are bound to
remain anxious if there is a ′should′ in life. If there is an ideal
which has to be fulfilled how can you be at ease? how can you be at
home? It is impossible to live anything totally, because the mind is
hankering for the future. And that future never comes - it cannot
come; by the very nature of your desire it is impossible. When it
comes you will start imagining other things, you will start desiring
other things.
You can always imagine a better state of affairs. And you can always
remain in anxiety, tense, worried - that′s how humanity has been
living for centuries. Only rarely, once in a while, has a man
escaped out of the trap. That man is called a Buddha, a Christ.
The awakened man is one who has slipped out of the trap of the
society, who has seen it - that this is just absurdity. You cannot
improve upon yourself. And I am not saying that improvement does not
happen, remember - but you cannot improve upon yourself. When you
stop improving upon yourself, life improves you. In that relaxation,
in that acceptance, life starts caressing you, life starts flowing
through you. And when you don′t have any grudge, any complaint, you
bloom, you flower.
So I would like to say to you: Don′t lose this thread that has
fallen into your hands. This is the most valuable thing that you can
learn here, that you can see with me - this is what I would like to
impart to you all: Accept yourself as you are. And that is the most
difficult thing in the world, because it goes against your training,
your education, your culture. From the very beginning you have been
told how you should be. Nobody has ever told you that you are good
as you are; they have all put programs in your mind. You have been
programmed by the parents, by the priests, politicians, teachers -
you have been programmed for only one thing: just go on improving
upon yourself. Wherever you are, go on rushing for something else.
Never rest. Work unto death. My teaching is simple: Don′t postpone
life. Don′t wait for tomorrow, it never comes. Live it today!
Jesus says to his disciples ′Look at the lilies in the field. They
toil not, they weave not, they spin not - yet even Solomon was not
so beautiful as these poor lily flowers.′ What is the beauty of the
poor flower? It is in utter acceptance. It has no program in its
being to improve. It is here now - dancing in the wind, taking a
sunbath, talking to the clouds, falling asleep in the afternoon
warmth, flirting with the butterflies... enjoying, being, loving,
being loved.
And the whole existence starts pouring its energy into you when you
are open. Then the trees are greener than they look to you, then the
sun is sunnier than it looks to you; then everything becomes
psychedelic, becomes colorful. Otherwise everything is drab and dull
and Grey.
Accept yourself: that is prayer. Accept yourself: that is gratitude.
Relax into your being - this is the way God wanted you to be. In no
other way did He want you to be, otherwise He would have made you
somebody else. He has made you you and nobody else. Trying to
improve upon yourself is basically trying to improve upon God -
which is just stupid, and you will get madder and madder in trying
that. You will not arrive anywhere, you will have simply missed a
great opportunity.
I accept you as you are. That is just to impart to you to do the
same to others.
Jesus is reported to have said to his disciples ′I give you the
eleventh commandment: love. Love others as I have loved you.′ Note
that emphasis - ′Love others as I have loved you.′ And this he calls
the eleventh commandment. ′The new commandment I give to you: accept
others as I accept you.′
- Let this be the color of my sannyasins: acceptance. Let this be
the characteristic of my sannyasins: acceptance, utter acceptance.
And then you will be surprised - life is always ready to shower its
gifts on you. Life is not a miser, God always gives abundantly - but
we cannot receive it, because we don′t feel that we are worthy to
receive it.
That′s why people cling to miseries - they suit their programming.
People go on punishing themselves in a thousand and one subtle ways.
Why? Because that fits with the program. If you are not as you
should be, you have to punish yourself, you have to create misery
for yourself. That′s why people feel good when they are miserable.
Let me say it: People feel happy when they are miserable, they
become very very uneasy when they are happy. This is my observation
of thousands and thousands of people: when they are miserable
everything is as it should be. They accept it - it fits with their
conditioning, with their mind. They know how horrible they are, they
know that they are sinners. You have been told that you are born in
sin. What stupidity! What nonsense!
Man is not born in sin, man is born in innocence. There has never
been any original sin, there has only been original innocence. Each
child is born in innocence. We make him feel guilty - we start
saying ′This should not be. You should be like this.′ And the child
is natural and innocent. We punish him for being natural and
innocent and we reward him for being artificial and cunning. We
reward him for being phony - all our rewards are for phony people.
If somebody is innocent we don′t give any reward; we don′t have any
regard for him, we don′t have any respect for him. The innocent is
condemned, the innocent is thought to be almost synonymous with the
criminal. The innocent is thought to be foolish, the cunning is
thought to be intelligent. The phony is accepted - the phony fits
with the phony society.
Then your whole life will be nothing but an effort to create more
and more punishments for yourself. And whatsoever you do is wrong,
so you have to punish yourself for every joy. And even when joy
comes - in spite of yourself, mind you, when joy comes in spite of
yourself, when sometimes God simply bumps into you and you cannot
avoid Him - immediately you start punishing yourself. Something has
gone wrong - how can this happen to a horrible person like you?
Just the other night, Ashoka was asking me ′You talk, Osho, about
love, you talk of offering your love. But what have I got to give to
anybody?′ He asked ′What have I got to offer to my beloved?′
This is the secret idea of everybody: ′I have got nothing.′ What
have you not got? But nobody has told you that you have all the
beauties of all the flowers - because man is the greatest flower on
this earth, the highest evolved being. No bird can sing the song
that you can sing - the birds′ songs are just noises, although they
are still beautiful because they come out of innocence. You can sing
far better songs, of greater significance, of much more meaning. But
Ashoka says ′What have I got?′
The trees are green, beautiful, the stars are beautiful and the
rivers are beautiful. But have you ever seen anything more beautiful
than a human face? Have you ever come across anything more beautiful
than human eyes? On the whole earth there is nothing more delicate
than the human eyes - no rose can compete, no lotus can compete. And
what depth! But Ashoka asks me ′What have I got to offer in love?′
He must have lived a self-condemning life; he must have been putting
himself down, burdening himself with guilt.
In fact, when somebody loves you, you are a little bit surprised.
′What - me? The person loves me?′ The idea arises in your mind:
′Because he does not know me - that′s why. If he comes to know about
me, if he comes to see through me, he will never love me.′ So lovers
start hiding themselves from each other. They keep many things
private, they don′t open their secrets, because they are afraid that
the moment they open their heart the love is bound to disappear -
because they cannot love themselves; how can they conceive of
anybody else loving them?
Love starts with self-love. Don′t be selfish but be self-full - and
they are two different things. Don′t be a Narcissus, don′t be
obsessed with yourself - but a natural self-love is a must, a basic
phenomenon. Only then out of it can you love somebody else.
Accept yourself, love yourself, you are God′s creation. God′s
signature is on you and you are special, unique. Nobody else has
ever been like you and nobody else will ever be like you; you are
simply unique, incomparable. Accept this, love this, celebrate this
- and in that very celebration you will start seeing the uniqueness
of the others, the incomparable beauty of the others. Love is
possible only when there is a deep acceptance of oneself, the other,
the world. Acceptance creates the milieu in which love grows, the
soil in which love blooms.
You ask me:
What is happening? I weep as I write.
That′s beautiful - because there are things which can only be
said by tears; no word is more adequate. There are things which can
only be sung in tears - they are too deep for words; only tears can
relate them, convey them. Good - weep in joy, celebrate your tears.
Life is happening to you.
And life happens only when there is no desire for any future, when
you are ready to die this very moment. If death comes, your
acceptance is so total that you will embrace death. You will not ask
for even one more day′s time - for what? You have been living your
life so totally, you are so fulfilled, that death can be accepted.
Then there is no need to seek God, God will seek you. You just live
in joy, and see - miracles start happening.
In fact, the desire for God is the denial of Him. The real religious
person has no desire as such for God, there is no need. He lives
intensely, he lives totally - out of that totality God arrives. God
is a by-product, a consequence, of a life lived totally. And you
will be surprised to know, the godly know nothing of God - because
God is not separate. The godly know nothing of God, they don′t think
about God, they simply live God. They are gods.
And the wise know nothing of wisdom. It is only the fools who think
about wisdom, it is only the ignorant who think about knowledge. It
is only the ungodly who pray to God. The really godly simply live
God in their life - drinking water they drink God, eating food they
eat God, swimming in the ocean they swim in God. Dancing, it is God
dancing. Loving, it is God loving. The word ′god′ becomes
irrelevant, because their whole life becomes godly. And acceptance
is the door to it.
Learn more and more acceptance and unlearn your rejections. And if
you understand this, you will understand something very significant:
you will understand laughter. Otherwise the ordinarily so-called
religious know nothing of laughter. The churches are empty of
laughter, they have become cemeteries; they no more belong to life,
they are graveyards. And the moment you enter into a church you are
entering a graveyard - serious, somber, unlaughing, unloving,
undancing. Look at God′s life. Can you see anything church like?
Look at the trees and the moon and the sun - can you see anything
church like? The church is such a human creation - and not only
human but pathological, sickening. It is just not part of the flow
of life. It is like a rock in the river, it hinders. God is always
the God of love and laughter and light.
...
The real God is always a God of laughter. Whenever you think of God think of Him laughing, think of Him rolling on the floor with great laughter, and you will be closer to God. When you really laugh, for that moment you are no more on the earth, for that moment all weight disappears. For that moment the window opens, you are divine. Whenever you laugh you are closest to the divine, whenever you love you are closest to the divine. Whenever you sing and dance and make music, that is what real religion consists of.
(Osho - The Revolution #4)