YOU ARE NOT WHAT YOU APPEAR TO BE

<>>>YOU ARE NOT WHAT YOU APPEAR TO BE<>>>

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ONE OF YOUR MOST BASIC NEEDS IS TO BE NEEDED. But nobody wants to accept it, that "It is my basic need to be needed, to be loved, to be accepted." We are living in such pretensions, such hypocrisies. That is the reason why intimacy creates fear.

YOU ARE NOT WHAT YOU APPEAR TO BE. Your appearance is false. You may appear to be a saint; but deep down, you are still a weak human being with all the desires and all the longings.

THE FIRST STEP IS TO ACCEPT YOURSELF IN YOUR TOTALITY -- in spite of all your traditions, which have driven the whole of humanity insane. ONCE YOU HAVE ACCEPTED YOURSELF AS YOU ARE, the fear of intimacy will disappear. You cannot lose respect, you cannot lose your greatness, you cannot lose your ego. You cannot lose your piousness, you cannot lose your saintliness -- you have dropped all that yourself. You are just like a small child, utterly innocent. You can open yourself because inside, you are not filled with ugly repressions which have become perversions.

YOU CAN SAY EVERYTHING THAT YOU FEEL AUTHENTICALLY AND SINCERELY. And if you are ready to be intimate, you will encourage the other person also to be intimate. Your openness will help the other person also to be open to you. Your unpretentious simplicity will allow the other also to enjoy simplicity, innocence, trust, love, openness.

YOU ARE ENCAGED WITHIN STUPID CONCEPTS. And the fear is, if you become very intimate with somebody, he will become aware of it.

But we are fragile beings -- the most fragile in the whole existence. THE HUMAN CHILD IS THE MOST FRAGILE CHILD AMONGST ALL OTHER ANIMALS. The children of other animals can survive without the mother, without the father, without a family. But the human child will die immediately. So this frailty is not something to be condemned -- it is the highest expression of consciousness. A roseflower is going to be fragile; it is not a stone. And there is no need to feel bad about it, that you are a roseflower and not a stone.

AND ONLY WHEN TWO PERSONS BECOME INTIMATE ARE THEY NO MORE STRANGERS. And it is a beautiful experience to find that not only you are full of weaknesses but the other, too... perhaps everybody is full of weaknesses.

THE HIGHER EXPRESSION OF ANYTHING BECOMES WEAKER. The roots are very strong, but the flower cannot be so strong. Its beauty is because of its not being strong. In the morning it opens its petals to welcome the sun, dances the whole day in the wind, in the rain, in the sun, and by the evening its petals have started falling. It is gone. Everything that is beautiful, precious, is going to be very momentary.

BUT YOU WANT EVERYTHING TO BE PERMANENT. You love someone, and you promise that, "I will love you my whole life." And you know perfectly well that you cannot be even certain of tomorrow -- you are giving a false promise. All that you can say is, "I am in love with you this moment, and I will give my totality to you. About the next moment, I know nothing. How I can promise? You have to forgive me."

BUT LOVERS ARE PROMISING ALL KINDS OF THINGS WHICH THEY CANNOT FULFILL. Then frustration comes in, then the distance grows bigger; then fight, conflict, struggle; and a life that was meant to become happier, becomes just a long, drawn out misery.

OSHO
The Hidden Splendor
Ch #4: Who is preventing you? join the dance!
am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
[part 3 of 7]