• Desire disappears as you become more and more aware. When awareness is one hundred percent, there is no desire at all.
    - Osho

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Question 6

Osho,

Should one not listen to and follow the wise advice of one's parents, teachers and well-wishers?

 

Listen, but don’t follow. Listen well, but follow your own insight, don’t follow others’ advice. Listen certainly—very meditatively, try to understand what they are wanting to convey to you. They may really be well wishers, but if you start following blindly you will never attain to your own intelligence. You will remain dependent on crutches, you will always look up to others to tell you what to do, what not to do. You will always need leaders - which is a very unhealthy state, to need leaders.

 

Listen, because people have great experiences, and if they are sharing, willing to share, it will be foolish on your part not to listen. Sharing their experience may give you great insight—it will help you to become more aware—but don‘t follow.

 

People follow literally and then they become just blind. When others are giving you all that you need, what is the need to have your own eyes? And when others are chewing for you, what is the need to chew on your own? Slowly, slowly you become more and more weak, more and more impoverished, more and more starved. [....]

 

Now if you go on listening to people you will become more and more confused; that's how you have become confused. Your confusion is this: that you have been listening to many kinds of people and they are all giving different advice. And I am not saying that they are not well-wishers; they are well-wishers, but not very conscious well-wishers, otherwise they would not give you advice. They would give you an insight, not advice. They would not tell you what to do and what not to do. They would help you to become more aware so that you can see yourself what has to be done and what has not to be done.



The real friend is one who does not advise you, but helps you to become more alert, more aware, more conscious of life -- its problems, its challenges, its mysteries, and helps you to go on your own voyage, gives you courage to experiment, gives you courage to seek and search, gives you courage to commit many mistakes... because one who is not ready to commit mistakes will never learn anything at all.



Commit as many mistakes as you can, but don't commit the same mistake twice because that makes you stupid. Commit new mistakes, invent new mistakes, and you will be learning all the time, and your intelligence will be growing all the time. Your intelligence needs sharpening.



The real friends help you to sharpen your intelligence. They don't give you fixed advice, because fixed advice is of no use. What is true today may not be true tomorrow, and what is right in one situation may be wrong in another. And situations are changing all the time, so what you need is not a fixed pattern of living but a way of seeing, so wherever you are, in whatsoever situation you find yourself, you know how to behave spontaneously, how to depend on your own being.

 

-Osho, "The Guest, #5, Q6"

 

 

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Osho Dictionary

A Spiritual Dictionary for the Here and Now

List of Articles
No. Category Subject
74 A Absolute : A man of truth is always relative.
73 A Abstinence : You can be a celibate, but to be a celibate does not mean to go beyond sexuality.
72 A Abstractions : Because you can't love human beings you start loving humanity just to deceive yourself. Avoid abstractions.
71 A Absurd : The absurd is nothing but another name of God
70 A Absurdity : Collect as many absurdities in your life as possible.
69 A Accept yourself : Accept yourself as you are, and accept totally, unconditionally. That is the way God wants you to be
68 A Accept Yourself : This is the first step of Unio Mystica: be one with yourself.
67 A Acceptance : Accepting is another name for Let Go
66 A Acceptance : If somebody hits you, bow down your head, accept it with gratitude.
65 A Accidental : Become a little more conscious. See what is happening.
64 A Accidents : Consciousness can be, and without content. So that accident was a blessing.
63 A Accidents : life goes ahead and your mind is past-oriented
62 A Acharya : He knows exactly what he’s teaching, but not on his own authority.
61 A Act : You will create a chain of reactions and you will get into karma.
60 A Acting : The really spiritual person transforms his whole life into an acting.
59 A Action : You have to use action to attain non-action.
58 A Action and Activity : Action is when the situation demands it, you act, you respond. Activity is when the situation doesn't matter, it is not a response
57 A Active Meditation : All traditional methods have become irrelevant.
56 A Activity : Action is not activity; activity is not action.
55 A Activity : Activity has utility, action is pure joy, pure beauty.
54 A Acupuncture : Acupuncture deals with the cause. Never deal with the effect
53 A Adam's Apple : Adam became knowledgeable, hence the fall. So knowledge is the fall.
52 A Adam's Apple : I am against all kinds of enforced things.
51 A Admiration : One wants to be admired because one has no respect for oneself.
50 A Adultery : The real meaning of adultery is making love while you are not in love.
49 A Advaita : Advaita means not two
48 A Advaita : Existence Is Advaita
47 A Advertising : It hypnotized you.
» A Advice : Listen, but don’t follow.
45 A Ageing (Aging) : You are just pure consciousness
44 A Aging : Change beautifies everything.
43 A Ah : Ah, this cake is delicious
42 A AIDS : Perversion requires the basic condition that you are fed up with changing women, you want something new.
41 A Alchemy : How to change the negative into the positive
40 A Alcohol : Nothing but a chemical strategy to forget your miseries, anxieties, your problems, to forget yourself.
39 A Alertness : If you are alert, if your actions become more and more aware
38 A Alienation : He is an uprooted tree. He has forgotten how to relate with existence
37 A Alone : The person who is not able to be alone cannot be together with somebody, because he has no individuality.
36 A Aloneness : Rejoicing in Your Own Aloneness
35 A Aloneness : We are born alone, we live alone, and we die alone
34 A Ambition : Nothing kills love more than Ambitiousness
33 A Ambition : The result of an inferiority complex
32 A Ambition : The root cause
31 A Amen : It simply means "Yes, Lord, yes. Let thy will be done.
30 A Analysis : The beauty is something more, hence in analysis it disappears.
29 A Androgyny : Where your man and woman inside meet and mingle and disappear into each other.
28 A Angels : You are simply creating belief systems to cling to.
27 A Anger : Anger is just a mental vomit.
26 A Anger : If anger rages within, shout, cry, jump, talk, babble, do whatever you please
25 A Anguish : Anguish is, in short, the quest of who you are.
24 A Anguish : God is not responsible for your stupidity. It is your own work.
23 A Anguish : The anguish of not knowing oneself
22 A Answer : To Be Questionless is the Answer
21 A Anti Christ : The people who established Christianity, they are the Antichrist.
20 A Apology : We don't try to reform ourselves, we only try to reform our image.
19 A Art : If it leads you towards God, it is true art, it is authentic art.
18 A Art : To be a painter, you have to drop the ego
17 A Art, Objective : Objective art means something that helps you to become centered
16 A Asleep : Man is asleep – man lives in a deep slumber
15 A Assertion (Assertive) : Everybody has to be assertive, not aggressive.
14 A Astrology : Astrology is an investigation into the possibility that whatever is happening anywhere in the universe also affects man.
13 A Astrology : The Science of Cosmic Oneness
12 A Atheism : Just as the theists are blind, so are the atheists. Both are believers.
11 A Attachment : Attachment means clinging to something, wanting it the way it is forever.
10 A Attention : If you pay much attention to suffering, you help it to grow. If you pay much attention to happiness, you help it to grow.
9 A Aum : The primordial sound of which the whole universe consists
8 A Aum : The symbol of the seventh body
7 A Austerity : Austerity does not mean torture; austerity means a simple life, an austere life.
6 A Authenticity : To be authentic means to be true to oneself.
5 A Authoritative : Authoritarian People are suffering from Inferiority Complex
4 A Autohypnosis : You create illnesses! You believe in them.
3 A Average : You will drop your averageness. It is just forced on you.
2 A Avoidance : The harder you try to avoid it, the more focused you become on it.
1 A Awareness : The Seed of Godliness in You
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