When the Shoe Fits - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 3. FLIGHT FROM THE SHADOW
This heaven exists nowhere. Whenever something exists, sound is created around it – footsteps,
shadows. This is how things are, you cannot do anything about it, this is how nature is. If you try
to do something about it you will go wrong; if you try to do something about it your whole life will be
wasted, and in the end you will feel that you have not reached anywhere. The shadow remains, the
footsteps make sounds, and death is knocking at the door.
Before death knocks, accept yourself – and then a miracle happens. That miracle is that when you
accept yourself, you don’t run away from yourself.
Right now, each one of you is running away from himself. Even if you come to me, you come to me
as part of your escape from yourself. That is why you cannot reach me; that is the gap. If you have
come to me as an escape from yourself you cannot come to me, because my whole effort is to help
you not to escape from yourself. Don’t try to escape from yourself, you cannot be anybody else. You
have a definite destiny and individuality.
Just as your thumb makes a sign, a print, unique and individual – that type of thumb has never
existed before and will never exist again, it belongs only to you, there will never be another like it –
the same is the case with your being also. You have a being unique and individual, incomparable. It
has never been before, it will never be again, only YOU have got it. Celebrate it! Something unique
has happened to everyone, God has given a unique gift to everyone, and you condemn it You want
something better! You try to be wiser than the existence, you try to be wiser than Tao – then you go
wrong.
Remember, the part can never be wiser than the whole, and whatsoever the whole is doing is the
final thing, you cannot change. You can make an effort to do so and waste your life, but nothing will
be achieved through it.
The whole is vast, you are just an atomic cell. The ocean is vast, you are just a drop in it. The
whole ocean is salty, and you are trying to be sweet. It is impossible! But the ego wants to do the
impossible, the difficult, that which cannot be done. And Chuang Tzu says, EASY IS RIGHT. Why
can’t you be easy and accepting? Why not say yes to the shadow? The moment you say yes, you
forget it, it disappears, from the mind at least, even if it remains with the body.
But what is the problem How does a shadow create a problem? Why make a problem out of it? As
you are right now, you make a problem out of everything. This man was puzzled, disturbed, by the
sight of his own shadow. He would have liked to be a god, he would have liked to be shadowless.
But you are already like a god and you cannot be anything that you are not already. How can you
be? You can only be that which you are, all becoming is just moving towards the being which is
already there. You may wander, and knock on others’ doors, but this is just playing hide and seek
with yourself. It is up to you how much you knock on others’ doors and how much you wander here
and there. Finally you will come to your own and to the realisation that your own has always been
there. Nobody can take it away. Nature, the Tao, cannot be taken away from you.
This man was disturbed because of his shadow. The method he hit upon was to run away from it.
That is the method everybody hits upon. It seems that the mind has a vicious logic.
When the Shoe Fits 37 Osho