Accept Yourself

The moment you accept yourself you become open, you become vulnerable, you become receptive. The moment you accept yourself 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 colour, 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 existence. If you accept yourself you have accepted existence; then there is nothing else to do but to enjoy, to celebrate. There is no complaint left, there is no grudge; you feel good. 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 the whole.

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 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 that 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 society, who has seen that this is just absurdity. You cannot improve yourself. And I am not saying that improvement does not happen, remember – but you cannot improve yourself. When you stop improving 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: 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 parents, by 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 now, then the sun is sunnier than it looks to you now; then everything becomes psychedelic, becomes colorful. Otherwise everything is drab and dull and gray.
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.
Let this be your colour: acceptance.
Let this be your characteristic: acceptance, utter acceptance. And then you will be surprised: Life is always ready to shower its gifts on you. Life is not a Miser, existence 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. 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 a man asked me, "You talk, Osho, about love, you talk of offering your love. But what have I got to give to anybody? What have I got to offer to my beloved?"
This is the secret idea of everybody: "I have nothing." What do you not have? But nobody has told you that you have all the beauties of all the f1owers, because mall is the greatest flower on this earth, the most 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 you ask, "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 eye? 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 you want to know, "What have I got to offer in love?" You must have lived a self-condemning life; you must have been putting yourself down, burdening yourself with guilt.
In fact, when somebody loves you, you are a little bit surprised.
"What-me? A person loves me?" The idea arises in your mind: "Because he does not know me, that's why. If he comes to know 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; 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.

Drop seeking and start living..

This is my effort here - to make you aware. That' s why I give you so many situations. Sometimes I force you to be alone and sometimes I force you to be together with someone.

Sometimes if you are not moving in a love affair, I will almost push you into one. Sometimes I will pull you out. It is just to give you many situations in which you can see how the mind functions, how the mechanism functions.

The mind is discontent with everything that is. If you become aware of that, you will start working in a different direction. Whatsoever is, be content with it, and then the mind disappears.

Contentenment is a great meditation to help the mind disappear. Whatsoever is, be content with it. Sometimes when you are alone, be content with that and enjoy that moment, because you will hanker for it when there is a relationship. Feel blessed that this moment is there, because sooner or later somebody is going to disturb it. There are fools and fools - somebody will come and start an affair.

Before he comes, enjoy this peace, this silence, this freedom of being yourself. There is no need to compromise. There is nobody to hamper your space' enjoy it. And when somebody happens and you feel an appetite to be in a relationship, be in a relationship. But then enjoy the passion and the fever, the excitement. Enjoy the situation that love brings; the pain, the pleasure. Because sooner or later it will disappear and you will be alone again. Before it disappears, have the taste of it totally.

Love and aloneness go on happening like day and night. You have to enjoy every situation. And don’t be too much in the mind, otherwise it will poison you. Just keep a little aloof. Forget what has gone; it has gone! It is no more. And don’t be too concerned with what is going to happen; remain with what is happening, and enjoy this moment before it flies, because it is already on the wing. It will not be there if you miss it and it cannot be repeated again.

It may grow into love, it may not, but friendship is good in itself. And one never knows when he becomes a lover you may miss his friendship and you will think 'Why did I destroy the friendship?'

Friendship has its own beauty, and if you can enjoy it, it is better than a love affair. A love affair is always jumpy. There are moments of happiness but they are few and far between. There are also many miserable moments. A friendship is a more solid thing; moves on plainer ground. Friendship has a deeper equilibrium than love.

In the Vedas, there is a sutra, Madbyam Abhyam - 'The one who is in the middle need not be afraid of anything.' The middle is beyond fear. The middle means the balanced and love is not balanced. Friendship is balanced. . Love is an extreme. Friendship is a very delicate middle, a very peaceful affair. So don’t be in a hurry. Just cherish each moment as it comes.

[ a sanyasin says that she was frustrated at seeing her continual deceptions, her lying, and that she just didn’t seem to have any clarity about herself]

Once you are aware that you are being deceptive, it is not possible to continue for much longer. There are two problems that affect you - in fact that were not just your problems, but universal problems.

One is that you are missing meaning. You cant see what to live for. You somehow just drag. You get up in the morning, go to work, but there seems to be no meaning in it. This is a basic human problem.

People who are a little intelligent are bound to become aware that there is no meaning in life, but one has to live, so one has to befool oneself. One pretends that there is meaning - this meaning, that meaning - and one goes on doing this and that to help oneself believe that there is some meaning. But you know there is none.

You have to come to the understanding that there is no meaning as such in life and cannot be. Life is a meaningless energy and there is no need to find any meaning because all meanings are false, projected, man-made, do they are all lies.

This is very difficult to accept because it is very shattering. But once you understand it, many problems will disappear and you will be clear about your life.

Life is purposeless, meaningless. It is not going anywhere. There is nothing to be achieved. One has to live moment to moment but of sheer delight.

There is no need to connect one moment to another moment by a certain imposed meaning because there is none. Meaning is a lie. Somebody is living to impress people, somebody is living for political power. Somebody is living for money, somebody is trying to achieve god. And somebody is going to work out his liberation.

But a really liberated person is one who has understood that there is no meaning, so he is not seeking, searching for anything. He lives the moment. It is there - he enjoys it. If he is eating, he eats well. he enjoys. God has come in the form of food. The whole has extended its hand in the form of food. If he talking, he talks because god wants to say something and another form of god wants to listen to it, so let there be communication. If one sings, one sings totally. If one dances, one dances. Each moment in itself complete. One does not carry the past and one is not worried about the future. One lives herenow.

So this is one of the things that I see is your problem. So drop seeking meaning and start living. The second thing - and that too is nothing to do with you, that too, is human – it is that you don’t accept yourself. Deep down you feel a certain rejection of yourself. You would like to be in some other way, so whatever is there you try to overlook somehow. Then it becomes a lie. But this is my experience and observation, that nobody i came across loves himself and accepts himself. People always find excuses.

Deep down the human mind is a rejector. It goes on rejecting. You have to drop that. This is the way God wanted to be in you - fat and beautifully fat. This is the form that God wanted to take in you and he is enjoying, so why be worried? Just accept.

And when I say accept, I don’t mean accept in a frustrated state of mind. No. Accept with a deep welcome. If you can tackle these two things, your problems will disappear.

I accept you, so why cant you accept yourself?

Accept yourself, delight in your being. And there is no need to hanker for any meaning. Moment to moment is full of meaning. And whenever you lose trust, come back to Poona, so that I can hit it back into your head again, mm? you don’t have a thick head , so don’t be worried! ( a chuckle)

And sometimes stand in front of a mirror and look at yourself with very loving eyes. Sometimes touch your own face with a loving hands. One should learn how to love oneself. Lie down on the bed and feel yourself.