Wound

 

 

[A sannyasin, who is returning to the West, says he is feeling emotionally exhausted since he completed the primal group two months ago: I feel there's just big wounds inside me, and I'm just a bit afraid that they won't heal when I go back to the west. I feel very vulnerable.]

 

 

Wounds heal only when they are open -- wounds never heal when they are protected, defended. It is painful; to have an open wound but that's the only way it heals. So don't try to close it again. Remain vulnerable, mm? -- let the wind and the sun rays touch it, play with it. Yes, many times it will hurt, but remember only one thing: this time let it hurt but don't create a wall to protect it. Those walls ultimately become our imprisonment.

 

First we create them so that we are not hurt. It looks very rational to create a wall around oneself, an armour, so one is never hurt. Good -- it feels very reasonable, logical -- but by and by they not only protect you from being hurt; they also protect you from being communicative. Then nobody can communicate with you: you become unapproachable, unavailable, and then you are a prisoner inside.

 

Yes, you will not feel much hurt but you will not feel blissful either; how can one feel blissful in a grave? And this is a self-created grave. It is suicide... a slow, gradual, suicide. That's why you can't see it, because it comes so slowly and so logically that you never become aware of what you have been doing. If for your whole life you have been protecting your wounds and then suddenly they are open, one feels exhausted; hut it's natural. It is such a new phase: you have again become a child, vulnerable in exactly the same way as when you were a child. You don't feel strong enough, you feel helpless.

 

But remain that way this time -- don't miss this opportunity -- then you will start growing from your childhood towards maturity... and that is a totally different route. The maturity that you think you had was just a false maturity: hidden behind the wall was a child -- that's how it has come out. If you were really mature then by destroying your walls, your protections, why should you feel such a situation? Why should you feel so much like a wound and vulnerable?

 

Hidden behind was a child and you were wearing the mask of an adult man. Now the mask has been torn apart and suddenly you look in the mirror and you are a child -- helpless, exhausted, afraid, scared of the world. How are you going to manage? Because you don't know how to manage the world without the mask... you don't know how to talk to people directly, immediate, without the mask. You are afraid people will cheat you because they will see that you are a child. You can again start wearing the old man but you will be back in the old rut. It has not helped... it is not going to help.

 

This time be vulnerable; don't commit this mistake that you had to commit when you were a child, because that was not done consciously, you had to do it. The whole society and the family and the whole system that surrounds a child helps to create it. The first time you did it unconsciously. You were not at fault, you can be forgiven. But if this time you do it you are at fault, you cannot be forgiven.

 

Let it be so. If you feel helpless, say 'Okay, so I am helpless but I will not create a wall. This time I Will grow in my inner strength.' These are two different things. To grow in inner strength is one thing; to remain weak inside and just to create an iron wall around yourself is a totally different thing. It simply gives you the feeling that you are strong because the wall is there and you are protected and nobody can come and hurt you. But if nobody can hurt you, nobody can love you either because hurts come from the same window, from the same aperture, as love, as joy, as friendship, as celebration.

 

If you are too much afraid of thorns you will miss the roses too because they are there together... and what is life without a rose?

 

I was reading a book in which the author plays with the word 'eros'. He says, 'If something goes wrong, the same word "e-r-o-s" becomes "sore", "s-o-r-e". If everything goes right the same word becomes rose, "r-o-s-e"; those letters remain the same'. I liked the play with the word... it remains eros, those four letters.

 

If you go on protecting yourself and your energy, your eros energy will become sore. That's what has happened: it has become a wound. The same wound can become a rose, it can become a flower, it can bloom with great joy, but then you will need open sky and winds and the sun. Yes, there is danger. You can put the rose in your protected home under the shelter; it will die! It needs all the challenge of the open world; all the dangers are needed. Those are nourishing dangers: they are nutritious, they are essential vitamins.

 

Something very essential has happened, I can see it: you are like a wound. This is the same energy that can become a flower but for that you will have to be courageous enough to remain open whatsoever comes. Accept it if sometimes you feel hurt. Nothing is wrong in feeling hurt: it simply shows that one is alive. To feel hurt shows that you are not dead.

 

It is very very good and indicative that the person is still alive. Many people have become dead. The only way they know how to protect themselves is to become completely insensitive so nothing hurts; they grow a thick skin around their consciousness. They become thick, dense, mm? but nothing hurts. Then you remain protected, certainly, but you are no more living, you are no more celebrating this life. This eternal celebration goes on and you remain far away stuck in your fear, stuck in your defence, stuck with yourself.

 

My suggestion is: be courageous. This time don't protect... and if you don't protect you will start growing because the same energy that you put into your protection and into creating the wall will fall into your being and will start helping you grow and you will become mature.

 

That's what the difference is between right education and wrong education: wrong education gives only a false idea that you are strong and behind it you remain weak. Right education will really make you strong without creating an armour around you. You will not need the armour because you will be strong. Only weaklings need armour -- why should a really strong man need any armour? He will trust himself and he will trust life and he will play a thousand and one games with life. Sometimes it will be dangerous too but he will be adventurous.

 

So, this time don't fall back into the old pattern. And this is good, that you are going, mm? There you will be really hurt by many people... and this is going to be a blessing to you. Accept those hurts... respond!

 

If sometimes you feel hurt and you feel like crying, cry like a baby; what can you do? And sometimes you feel angry, then be angry. Don't hide it: be true to your feelings.

 

I don't see that your emotional energy is exhausted, no, only your repressive energy is exhausted... and these are different things. Emotional energy is there, really coming up for the first time, and that's why you are so afraid. You are not only afraid from the outside, that is a secondary fear; you are more afraid from the inside, and you have not even mentioned it.

 

You are more afraid from the inside because if all these emotions.... The armour protects you from the outside and the armour protects you from the inside too: it does not allow anything to enter in you so there is no need to respond. Somebody insults you and you are dense; it does not reach you. Somebody dies and you are thick, it does not penetrate you so you remain perfectly okay; no emotional response is needed.

 

Now if somebody dies you will feel almost like dying. If you love somebody and he dies or she dies, for a few days you are going to be really in death. When a beloved dies, for a few days at least one has to go with the beloved into deep depth, into deep death... into those gloomy nights, into that shaken, shocked, uprooted world. And you will feel a thousand and one things, small things: sometimes just a bird crying in the trees and you will feel so full of joy that you will cry -- for no visible reason.... Sometimes just a breeze comes and you are surrounded by the cool breeze and you feel so joyous that tears come.

 

These are the basic fears, more primary than fears from the outside. This is what you really mean when you say you have become like a wound. Everything is going to hurt, but by and by through those hurts, through your real response for the first time without any mask, you will start growing in strength; you will become more integrated.

 

And I don't mean that when a man becomes really integrated he is never disturbed -- I'm not saying that He is disturbed but that is momentary... he is totally disturbed, but that is momentary. He is innocently disturbed but he is total in it: it comes and it goes and after one second he is out of it. These disturbances disappear only when you are no more.

 

These are the three stages of human life: the disintegrated human being -- a crowd, split... a polypsychic state, many minds, many selves, not one self. Then there is the second state -- the integrated human being: one self has arisen, strong, really strong, self-confident, trustful, loving, alert, aware. All those small selves have dissolved into it; a big self has arisen. Those small selves are no more there; a new self with a capital 'S' has arisen. This is the second state -- that has to happen to you if you allow: if you give this gift to yourself this will happen.

 

And then the third state is when the self disappears and no-self arrives; then there is no disturbance, nothing. There is no outside, no inside: all has disappeared... the whole drama has disappeared. This is the total end... this is what nirvana is, but on the way to nirvana, from the third stage one cannot jump to this highest state of no-self. From many selves one cannot jump to no-self -- from many selves one has to come to one self and from one self to no-self.

 

... Really be courageous and allow this wound to heal on its own -- don't create any armour for it!

 

-Osho, "Far Beyond the Stars, #20"