Osho Quote:

[Mystress]

Question: Have I come to the wrong place? I just want to be ordinary and
happy. I want a woman to love, and to love me; friends to spend time
with and enjoy. I don&8217;t want enlightenment. Have I come to the wrong
place?

Osho: Centuries of wrong upbringing have completely confused your mind
about enlightenment. The very word seems to be unearthly,
other-worldly; the very word seems to be something which is after death
or for those who are already dead. This is absolutely wrong.

If you want to be happy there is no other way than enlightenment. If
you want to be ordinary nobody has ever been ordinary without
enlightenment. If you want to love and be loved it is impossible
without enlightenment. So you will have to understand my concept of
enlightenment. It is just to be ordinary, healthy, aware, whole. Total.

Every mind is seeking some extraordinariness. That is what the ego is:
always trying to be somebody in particular, always afraid of being
nobody, always afraid of emptiness, always trying to fill the inner void
by anything and everything. Every human being is seeking
extraordinariness &8211; and that creates misery. It is not possible.
Nobodiness is your very nature, non-being is the very stuff you are
made of. Howsoever you try you will never succeed; even Alexanders
fail. You cannot be somebody because that is not possible in the nature
of things. You can only be nobody. But there is nothing wrong in being
nobody; in fact, the moment you accept your nobodiness, immediately
bliss starts flowing from you in all directions &8211; because misery
disappears. Misery is the shadow of the ego, the shadow of the
ambitious mind. Misery means you are doing something impossible and
because you are failing in it you are miserable. You are doing something
unnatural, trying to do it and failing, so you feel frustrated,
miserable.

To me, enlightenment is all about this phenomenon, to recognize, to
realize to accept the fact that one is a nobody. Suddenly you stop
trying the impossible. Suddenly you stop pulling yourself up by your
shoelaces. You understand the absurdity of it &8211; and you stop. And
laughter spreads over your being. Suddenly you are calm and collected.
The very effort of wanting to be somebody is creating trouble.

And when you try to be somebody you cannot love. An ambitious mind
cannot love. It is impossible, because he has first to fulfill his
ambition. He has to sacrifice everything for it. He will go on
sacrificing his love. Look at ambitious people &8211; if they are after
money they always postpone love. Tomorrow when they have accumulated a
lot of money then they will be in love; right now it is impossible, it
is not in any way practical; right now they cannot afford it. Love is a
relaxation and they are running after something to achieve &8211; a goal.
Maybe it is money, maybe it is power, prestige, politics. How can they
love now? They cannot be here and now -&8211;and love is a phenomenon of
here and now. Love exists only in the present, ambition exits in the
future; love and ambition never meet.

You cannot love. And if you cannot love, how can you be loved by
anybody else? Ambition will never be fulfilled. It is not the nature of
it to be fulfilled. You can fulfill one ambition; immediately a
thousand other ambitions arise out of it. Ambition never stops. If you
follow it, if you understand, it can stop right now. But if you give
energy to it, how can you love? That&8217;s why people are so miserable
trying to be somebody &8211; miserable because they are not getting love,
miserable because they cannot love.

So if you want really to love and be loved&8230;that is not possible right
now as you are; you have to disappear. You have to leave &8211; so that a
clean nothingness is left, a fresh nothingness is left behind. Only
then can the flower of love bloom. The seeds are there, but the ego is
like a rock, and the seeds cannot sprout on it.

And you say you want to be ordinary? And you want to love? And you want
friends? And you want to enjoy? This is exactly what enlightenment is
all about! But if you go to the priests and to the preachers and to the
organized religions and the churches, their enlightenment is different.
They are against love, they are against ordinariness; they are against
friendship, they are against enjoyment, they are against everything that
your nature naturally seeks. They are the great poisoners.

Enlightenment is a man who is fully aware of his inner emptiness and is
not fighting it; rather, he enjoys it, it is blissful. Through the
enjoyment of his own emptiness he becomes available to others; others
can enjoy, others can come and participate in his mystery. His doors
are open, he invites friends and lovers, and he is ready to share, he is
ready to give. When you give out of your emptiness you are never afraid
of giving because you cannot exhaust the emptiness. You go on giving,
you go on giving, you go on giving &8211; it is always there, you cannot
exhaust it.

Enjoy! I am not for sadness and long faces. I am not here to make you
more miserable &8211; you are already too miserable. I am not here to give
you more sadness. I am here to awaken you to the bliss that is your
birthright, that is naturally available to you. But you have forgotten
how to approach it, and you are going in the wrong directions; you seek
it somewhere where it is not; you seek it outside and it is inside; you
seek it far and away and it is near; you seek it in the distant stars
and it is just in front of you.

You have come to the right place. Your mind may like to escape from
here, because this is going to be a death to your mind. It is the right
place for you, but the wrong place for your mind. It is the absolutely
right place for your being, but for your ambitions, your ego, your
pride, your stupidities, it is the most wrong place you can find
anywhere on the earth at this moment.

So you decide. If you want to be stupid, escape, then the mind will go
on befooling you that you are in love and enjoying &8211; and you know you
are not enjoying, and you know that you are not in love. Then the mind
may go on befooling you that you are indulging &8211; you cannot indulge.
You are not even there to indulge. You don&8217;t exist. You don&8217;t have an
integrated being in any way. You may wander around and deceive yourself
but if you really want to be loved and to love, you want friends, you
want to enjoy life &8211; I am giving you the keys to it.

Osho, &8220; Tao, The Three Treasures&8221;

[Leslee]

i resonate with that. Thanks for sharing it.