Respect

 

 

We are responsible. Nobody is preventing us from becoming what we are supposed to be except ourselves. We are the only enemies. The whole existence is friendly towards us, but we are not friendly towards ourselves.

 

We have been taught to condemn ourselves; we have been taught that we are worthless. We have been told in thousand and one ways that we are dirt, and that has become part of our conditioning.

 

The first step in sannyas is: respect yourself, because if you don't respect yourself you cannot respect anybody else in the world. Not even God can be respected, because even God comes number two; number one is you.

 

Love yourself. If you can't love yourself you cannot love anybody else. And if you cannot love yourself, who is going to love you either? And when there is no love and no respect for one's being, life becomes a desert, because it is only through love and respect that one makes a garden out of one's being, that one starts learning how to play on one's own heart's harp. Then one starts learning how to be more and more poetic, graceful, aesthetic, sensitive... because life is such a great opportunity, it has not to be missed. It is such a treasure, it has not to be wasted.

 

So the first step and the most fundamental step is: love yourself, respect yourself. And that does not mean that become an egoist. Loving yourself is not creating an ego. The trees love themselves and there is no ego; and the birds love themselves and there is no ego.

 

Ego arises not out of love for yourself but out of comparison. When you compare with others, ego arises. Then ego can have two sides: either you will suffer from inferiority complex, that is the one side of the ego, or from superiority complex; that is another side of the same disease. But both arise out of comparison.

 

So when I am saying love yourself, I am saying simply as if you are alone here in the whole of existence. There is nobody else, so there is no possibility of comparing. Respect yourself not comparatively; simply respect yourself, just respect yourself. And in that respect you will respect life because you are life, and in that love you will love life because you are life. And in that love and respect you will respect and love the whole existence.

 

That's what prayer is all about, but it can arise only if you move in the right direction. Loving oneself, respecting oneself, is the right direction. And one then starts growing naturally.

 

Growth is not something which has to be forced upon one. We have only to create the context and the growth happens. You put the seed in the soil, you put on the manure, you water it, and you wait. You have created the context, you have created the space for the seed; now it is for the seed and its nature to sprout. And it will sprout in its time and it will grow. You need not pull it; it will grow on its own.

 

Growth is not an effort; it is an effortless, natural phenomenon. All that is needed is creating a right space, a right context. That's what sannyas is all about.

 

-Osho, "Snap Your Fingers, Slap Your Face and Wake Up!, #4"