When the Shoe Fits - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 3. FLIGHT FROM THE SHADOW
All ideologies, all ideals, are condemnatory because then an image is created in the mind. And
when you go on comparing yourself with that image you will always feel that something is lacking,
something is missing. Nothing is lacking and nothing is missing. You are perfect as far as there is
any possibility of perfection.
Try to understand this, because only then will you be able to understand Chuang Tzu’s parable. It
is one of the most beautiful parables that anybody has ever talked about, and it goes very deep into
the very mechanism of the human mind. Why do you go on carrying ideals in the mind? Why are
you not enough as you are? Just at this moment why are you not like gods? Who is interfering?
Who is blocking your path? This very moment why can’t you enjoy and be blissful? Where is the
block?
The block comes through the ideal.... How can you enjoy? You are filled with so much anger; first
the anger has to go. How can you be blissful? You are filled with so much sexuality; first the sex has
to go. How can you be like gods celebrating this very moment? You are filled with so much greed,
passion, anger; first they have to go. Then you will be like gods.
This is how the ideal is created and because of the ideal, you become condemned. Compare
yourself with the ideal, and you will never be perfect, it is impossible. If you say ’if’, then bliss is
impossible because that ’if’ is the greatest disturbance.
If you say, ’If those conditions are fulfilled then I will be blissful’, then these conditions are never
going to be fulfilled. And, secondly, even if these conditions are fulfilled, by that time you will have
lost the very capacity to celebrate and enjoy. And moreover, when these conditions are fulfilled – if
ever, because they cannot be fulfilled – your mind will create further ideals.
This is how you have been missing life for lives together. You create an ideal and then you want to
be that ideal; then you feel condemned and inferior. Because of your dreaming mind your reality is
condemned; dreams have been disturbing you.
I tell you just the opposite. Be like gods this very moment. Let there be anger, let there be sex,
let there be greed – you celebrate life. And by and by you will feel more celebration, less anger;
more blissfulness, less greed; more joy, less sex. Then you have hit upon the right path. It is not
otherwise. When a person can celebrate life in its totality, all that is wrong disappears, but if you try
first to make arrangements for the wrong to disappear, it never disappears.
It is just like fighting with darkness. Your house is filled with darkness and you ask: How can I light a
candle? Before I light a candle this darkness has to be dispelled. This is what you have been doing.
You say that first greed must go, then there will be samadhi, ecstasy. You are foolish! You are saying
that first the darkness must go then you can light a candle as if darkness can hinder you. Darkness
is a non entity, it is nothing, it has no solidity to it. It is just an absence, not a presence, it is just the
absence of light. Light the light and darkness disappears.
Celebrate, become a blissful flame, and all that is wrong disappears. Anger, greed, sex, or
whatsoever else you name, are not solid, they are just the absence of a blissful, ecstatic life.
Because you cannot enjoy, you are angry. It is not that somebody creates your anger – because you
cannot enjoy, you are in much misery, that is why you are angry. Others are only excuses. Because
When the Shoe Fits 35 Osho