Thursday, May 1, 2008

Society Never Teaches You to Be Watchful...

Why does man suppress so much and become unhealthy? Because the society teaches you to control, not to transform, and the way of transformation is totally different. For one thing, it is not the way of control at all, it is just the opposite.

First thing: in controlling you repress, in transformation you express.
But there is no need to express on somebody else because the ‘somebody else’ is just irrelevant. Next time you feel angry go and run around the house seven times, and after it sit under a tree and watch where the anger has gone. You have not repressed it, you have not controlled it, you have not thrown it on somebody else — because if you throw it on somebody else a chain is created, because the other is as foolish as you, as unconscious as you. If you throw it on another, and if the other is an enlightened person, there will be no trouble; he will help you to throw and release it and go through a catharsis. But the other is as ignorant as you — if you throw anger on him he will react. He will throw more anger on you, he is repressed as much as you are. Then there comes a chain: you throw on him, he throws on you, and you both become enemies.Don”t throw it on anybody. It is the same as when you feel like vomiting: you don’t go and vomit on somebody. Anger needs a vomit. You go to the bathroom and vomit! It cleanses the whole body — if you suppress the vomit it will be dangerous, and when you have vomited you will feel fresh, you will feel unburdened, unloaded, good, healthy. Something was wrong in the food that you took and the body rejects it. Don’t go on forcing it inside.Anger is just a mental vomit. Something is wrong that you have taken in and your whole psychic being wants to throw it out, but there is no need to throw it out on somebody.

Because people throw it on others, society tells them to control it.
There is no need to throw anger on anybody. You can go to your bathroom, you can go on a long walk — it means that something is inside that needs fast activity so that it is released. Just do a little jogging and you will feel it is released, or take a pillow and beat the pillow, fight with the pillow, and bite the pillow until your hands and teeth are relaxed. Within a five-minute catharsis you will feel unburdened, and once you know this you will never throw it on anybody, because that is absolutely foolish.The first thing in transformation then is to express anger, but not on anybody, because if you express it on somebody you cannot express it totally. You may like to kill, but it is not possible; you may like to bite, but it is not possible. But that can be done to a pillow. A pillow means ‘already enlightened’; the pillow is enlightened, a buddha. The pillow will not react, and the pillow will not go to any court, and the pillow will not bring any enmity against you, and the pillow will not do anything. The pillow will be happy, and the pillow will laugh at you.
The second thing to remember: be aware.In controlling, no awareness is needed; you simply do it mechanically, like a robot. The anger comes and there is a mechanism — suddenly your whole being becomes narrow and closed. If you are watchful control may not be so easy.Society never teaches you to be watchful, because when somebody is watchful, he is wide open. That is part of awareness — one is open, and if you want to suppress something and you are open, it is contradictory, it may come out. The society teaches you how to close yourself in, how to cave yourself in — don’t allow even a small window for anything to go out.But remember: when nothing goes out, nothing comes in either. When the anger cannot go out, you are closed. If you touch a beautiful rock, nothing goes in; you look at a flower, nothing goes in: your eyes are dead and closed. You kiss a person — nothing goes in, because you are closed. You live an insensitive life.

Sensitivity grows with awareness.
Through control you become dull and dead — that is part of the mechanism of control: if you are dull and dead then nothing will affect you, as if the body has become a citadel, a defense. Nothing will affect you, neither insult nor love.But this control is at a very great cost, an unnecessary cost; then it becomes the whole effort in life: how to control yourself — and then die! The whole effort of control takes all your energy, and then you simply die. And the life becomes a dull and dead thing; you somehow carry it on.The society teaches you control and condemnation, because a child will control only when he feels something is condemned. Anger is bad; sex is bad; everything that has to be controlled has to be made to look like a sin to the child, to look like evil.Mulla Nasruddin’s son was growing up. He was ten years of age and so Mulla thought: Now, this is the time. He is old enough and the secrets of life must be revealed to him. So he called him into his study and gave him the lowdown on sex among birds and bees. And then in the end he told him, “When you feel your younger brother is old enough, you tell the whole thing to him also.”Just a few minutes after, when he was passing by the rooms of the kids, he heard the older one, the ten-year-old one, already at work. He was telling the younger: “Look, you know what people do, that stuff people do when they want to get a child, a baby? Well, Dad says birds and bees do the same darn thing.”

A deep condemnation enters about all that is alive.
And sex is the most alive thing — has to be! It is the source. Anger is also a most alive thing, because it is a protective force. If a child cannot be angry at all, he will not be able to survive. You have to be angry in certain moments. The child has to show his own being, the child has to stand in certain moments upon his own ground; otherwise he will have no backbone.Anger is beautiful; sex is beautiful. But beautiful things can go ugly. That depends on you. If you condemn them, they become ugly; if you transform them, they become divine. Anger transformed becomes compassion — because the energy is the same. A buddha is compassionate: from where does his compassion come? This is the same energy that was moving in anger; now it is not moving in anger, the same energy is transformed into compassion. From where does love come? A Buddha is loving; a Jesus is love. The same energy that moves into sex becomes love.So remember, if you condemn a natural phenomenon it becomes poisonous, it destroys you, it becomes destructive and suicidal. If you transform it, it becomes divine, it becomes a God-force, it becomes an elixir; you attain through it to immortality, to a deathless being. But transformation is needed.

Reproduced from OSHO Times

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