Self-Acceptance

 

 

[A sannyasin therapist says: The power that I have -- the beautiful power that I have -- becomes so unwillingly destructive. I don't want to have the compulsion to enter into things or become destructive towards.... ]

 

 

The problem is that you don't accept yourself. You can call it compulsion or you can call it something else -- but you don't accept yourself as you are. You want to improve yourself -- and there is the core of the problem.

 

Improvement is not possible. Improvement is a very false notion. It has never happened... it cannot happen. By the nature of things it is not possible. Nobody ever improves, because everyone is already that which one can be, so one has to relax and accept it. If that is your pattern, then that is you.

 

Once you accept it, things will start changing. And I don't say they will improve -- I say they will start changing. Change is a totally neutral concept. In improvement there is greed, in improvement there is ego. In change.... It is just like summer changes, and then it is rains, and rains change and it is winter, and seasons change -- but there is no improvement.

 

The whole western mind is basically caught up with the concept of progress. Evolution is there, but there is no progress. Evolution is also not a right word, because that too gives an idea as if something is evolving into a higher state. Nothing is going anywhere -- everything is where it is.

 

In the east we have the concept of circular motion... circular change. The wheel is the eastern symbol. That wheel is on the indian flag. It is a buddhist concept -- very meaningful. In the west you have a linear concept of life -- in a line: evolution, progress, improvement. Things are getting better! Nothing is getting better, nothing is getting worse; things are as they are. Things have always been the way they are, and they are going to be the way they are. You can get very much worked up and worried if you carry this concept of progress.

 

So on the social level in the west, there is the concept of a social progress, and on the individual level, improvement -- how to improve yourself. In fact in the american book market so many books are available on how to improve yourself and how to succeed and how to be this and that, that one is simply surprised. In the whole of the east, for five thousand years we have not created a single book on how to succeed and how to improve and how to win friends and influence people. We have not written a single book! We think that the whole existence is circular.

 

You are not caught in anything, because the very idea that you are separate from this pattern is wrong. You are this pattern...! You are this that you want to get free of.

 

You are creating a difficult thing which cannot be done. How can you be free from yourself? It is you! It is as if a rose wants not to grow any more roses, and the rosebush comes to me and says, 'Osho, I am caught up in a compulsion -- I always grow roses!' Mm? what nonsense! It is not a compulsion -- it is the way you are.

 

So I will say to the rosebush, 'With my blessings, go on growing bigger roses -- as many as you can grow -- and forget all this nonsense! You are not caught up in anything. This is you.'

 

Once you realise this fact, and the idea to improve and become better is dropped, suddenly you are free. To me, to become absolutely free of improvement, to be totally free of all nonsense -- of growth, improvement, going somewhere, reaching high altitudes, siddhis and powers, and occult and esoteric things -- is to become en-lightened. Once you are finished with all that nonsense -- it is ridiculous -- and once you say, 'This is what I am -- If I am a rose-bush, I am to be a rosebush, so why not be happily a rosebush? Why become sad? And why become neurotic and go to a psychiatrist's couch ? I am a rosebush. God intends me to be a rosebush, so I will be a rosebush. Now I will happily be a rosebush' -- there is no problem, because there is no division.

 

My suggestion is: simply be yourself. Don't bring in any categories, values. Once you see the fact that this is what you are, suddenly all problems disappear. Problems are created, manufactured, home-made. You weave and spin them. If this is the way things have been happening, this is the way they are going to happen; simply let them happen.

 

-Osho, "Blessed Are the Ignorant, #2"