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The World is a Mirror

If you are positive, then nothing is negative for you. If you are negative, then everything will be negative for you. You are the source of all that exists around you, you are the creator of your own world. And we are not living in one world, remember. There are as many worlds as there are minds. Each mind is living in its own world, it creates the world. So if everything looks negative and everything looks destructive and everything looks inimical, against you, it is because you do not have the positive center in you... If you feel negativity all around you, it simply shows you are negative within. The world is just a mirror, and you are reflected in it.

I was staying in a village rest house...

It was a very poor village, but the village was filled with many dogs. They all gathered in the night around the rest house. It may have been their usual habit. The rest house was a good place - big trees, shadow, and they might have been resting there every night. So I was staying there, and one minister of a particular state was staying there.
The minister became very much disturbed because the dogs were barking, creating much nuisance. Half the night passed and the minister couldn′t sleep, so he came to me.
He said, "Are you asleep?"
I was fast asleep, so he came near me, made me wake up and asked me, "Please tell me how you could fall into sleep amid such noises all around. At least twenty to thirty dogs are there, and they are fighting and barking and doing everything that dogs ordinarily do. So what to do? I cannot sleep, it will be difficult for me. The next day I have to go again on a tour. I will leave early in the morning. sleep doesn′t seem to come, and I have tried all the methods I have learned and heard about - chanting mantra, praying to god, etc. I have done everything, but nothing happens, so what to do now?"
So I told him, "Those dogs are not gathered here for you or to disturb you. They are not even aware that a minister is staying here; they do not read newspapers. They are completely ignorant; they are not here purposefully. They are not concerned with you. They are doing their work. Why you are getting disturbed?"
So he said, "Why I should not? How not to? With so much barking, how can I go into sleep?"
So I told him. "Do not fight with the barking. You are fighting: that is the problem - not the noise. The noise is not disturbing you, you are disturbing yourself because of the noise. You are against the noise, so you have a condition. You are saying, ′if the dogs stop barking, then i will sleep.′ The dogs won′t listen to you. You have a condition. You feel that if the condition is fulfilled, then you can sleep. This condition is disturbing you. Accept the dogs! Do not make a condition that ′if they stop barking then I will sleep.′ Just accept. Dogs are there and they are barking: do not resist, do not fight, do not try to forget those noises. Accept them and listen to them: they are beautiful. The night is so silent, and they are barking so vitally. Just listen. This will be the mantra - the right mantra: just listen to them."
So he said, "Okay! I do not believe that this will help, but as there is nothing else to do, I will try."
He fell asleep, and dogs were still barking. In the morning he said, "This is miraculous. I accepted them, I withdrew my condition. I listened. Those dogs became very musical, and their barking, their noise, was not disturbing. Rather, it became a sort of lullaby, and I fell into deep sleep because of it."

It depends on your mind. If you are positive, then everything becomes positive. If you are negative, then everything turns negative, everything turns sour. So please remember this - not only about noises, but about everything in life: if you feel that something negative exists around you, go and find the cause within. It is you. You must be expecting something, you must be desiring something, you must be making some conditions.
Existence cannot be forced to go according to you, it flows in its own way. If you can flow with it, you will be positive. If you fight with it, you will become negative and the whole thing, the whole cosmos around you, will turn negative.
It is just like a person who is trying to float upstream, then the stream is negative. If you are trying to float upstream in a river, then the river will seem negative and you will feel that the river is fighting you - that the river is pushing you downwards. The river is trying to move you downstream, not upstream, so it will seem as if the river is fighting you. The river is completely unaware of you, blissfully unaware. And it is good; otherwise the river will go to a madhouse. The river is not fighting with you, you are fighting with the river. You are trying to float upstream.

I will tell you one anecdote...

A great crowd gathered around Mulla Nasrudin′s house, and they said, "What are you doing? Your wife has fallen into the stream and the river is in a flood. Go immediately. Otherwise the stream will take your wife to the sea."
The sea was just near, so Mulla came running to the bank, jumped into the stream and started swimming upstream to find where his wife was.
So the crowd screamed, "What are you doing, Nasrudin? Your wife couldn′t have gone upstream. She has gone downstream."
So Mulla said, "Do not disturb me, I know my wife very well. If anyone else had fallen into the stream, he would have gone downstream. Not my wife, however. She must have gone upstream. I know my wife well, I have lived with her forty years."

The mind is always trying to go upsteam, to move upstream. Fighting with everything, you create a negative world around you. Obviously, this has to happen. The world is not against you. Because you are not with the world, you feel it is against you. Float downstream, and then the river will help you to float. Then your energy will not be needed. The river will become a boat, it will take you. You will not lose any energy floating downstream because once you float downstream you have accepted the river, the current, the flow, the direction, everything. Then you have become positive to it. When you are positive, the river is positive to you.

(Osho - Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, vol 1 #26)