Whatsoever happens, I am going to remain happy

By Osho

"We are here to remind you that pain and fear are not the only methods of growth; that you can more elegantly grow through joy and love…that you create your own reality…that there is a God/Goddess/All That Is who loves you, who knows your name… and that you love good enough." — Lazaris (channelled through Jach Pursel).

It is part of your work upon yourself. In fact the day a person decides not to ask for things he likes but starts to like things which happen, that day a man becomes mature.

One can go on wanting what one likes. That will make you always miserable, because in the first place it is never going to happen. The world is not running according to your likes and dislikes. It has no guarantee that what you want, the whole is also wanting; there is no guarantee. There is every possibility that the whole is destined towards something else that you don't know anything about at all.

There is no possibility of its ever being fulfilled, so frustration and misery will be its outcome. And if by chance sometimes it happens that you fall in the rhythm with the whole, and by accident you like the same thing which was going to happen on its own, and it coincides ‑ which is very rare ‑ then too it is not your desire being fulfilled. No, it is simply because by some accident you liked the same thing which was already going to happen; whether you liked it or not was irrelevant.

When sometimes it does happen, then too you will not feel very happy, because whatsoever we demand, we have already lived through fantasy, so it is already secondhand. If you say that you would like a certain man to be your lover, then in many dreams and in many fantasies you have already loved that man. And if it happens, then the real man is going to fall short of your fantasy and he is going to be just a carbon copy because reality is never as fantastic as fantasy. Then you will be frustrated.

So a person who goes on asking for his own desires to be fulfilled is going to be frustrated. Either the desire is going to be fulfilled or not. Misery will be the outcome. If you start liking that which is happening, if you don't put your own will against the whole, if you simply say okay, whatsoever happens you simply say 'Yes', then you can never be miserable, because whatsoever happens, you are always in a positive attitude ready to receive it and enjoy it. If it goes just according to your nature, very good. If it sometimes goes against your nature, you take it as part of growth. If it is pleasure, good. If it is pain you accept it as a price to be paid for all the pleasures that are available in the world, the cost to be paid.

If it is pain, a positive, yes‑saying person accepts it as a growth pain and is happy about it because through it, growth will happen. If pleasure happens he accepts it as a gift of God. You cannot make him miserable. On one hand you cannot make a man happy if he is desiring too much and wanting this and that; it is impossible to make him happy.

 

On the other hand it is just the opposite. A person may accept whatsoever happens with deep gratitude ‑ whatsoever: good or bad, day or night, summer or winter, it makes no difference. He simply accepts, because whatsoever God sends must be good, has to be good. 'If I cannot see good in it then I have to grow into my awareness and see it. Nothing is wrong in it, something is wrong in me. So there is no need to be frustrated with it. The need is to grow more, to expand more, to understand more. Pain is happening because I am still not so alert and aware. If I am really aware then pain becomes impossible.'

Awareness brings you into the rhythm of existence. You become part of this organic unity. You don't move alone and separate. You don't function as an island, you don't isolate yourself. You are no more an ego and you don't try to go upstream. You float with the stream. In fact you become the stream. You have no will of your own; this is what surrender is. Try this time.

Just go ‑ that's exactly right ‑ creating no misery for yourself. And not only with this. With everything, from this moment, try the 'yes' attitude, the religious attitude. The grumbling, the complaining, always desiring something and then being frustrated and feeling negative and sad, not only creates misery, it creates a barrier between you and God ‑ because how can you love a God who goes on frustrating you? You propose and He disposes, and whatsoever you want He never fulfills. And He goes on doing things that you never asked for. How can you love a God who is never for you and always against you?

By and by a certain antagonism arises ‑ and that antagonism is the greatest barrier between you and life. So drop that. Float and let things happen, and soon you will see things are really happening as they should. In fact in the very desire that you wanted things otherwise, you were creating trouble for yourself.

Things are as they should be. They have always been that way. Existence is going so smoothly. Look at the stars and the trees and the birds and the rivers. Things are going so smoothly. There seems to be no problem. All problems exist in man and in the mind of man, and the problems are created, manufactured by man. First he desires something and in that very desire he is creating a conflict between himself and the whole. And how can you win against the whole?

That's what Jesus says: 'Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.' That is the deepest prayer ever uttered: 'Let Thy will be done. I withdraw. I will no more come in the way. I give way. I will simply open.'

If you desire, you are never open because the very desire makes you narrow. There are millions of alternatives and you desire one thing. So except for that one thing, everything else is excluded; you are focused on one thing. You don't know that there are millions of alternatives, millions of possibilities. Why hanker for this one? Why emphasise this one? Why pay so much attention to one at the cost of the whole existence?