On an Emotional Roller-Coaster: Fear is Part of Your Intelligence
“When moments of fear come, be fearful, tremble with fear. Fear comes – it is natural. When you allow fear and you tremble, watch it, enjoy it, and in that watching you will transcend it.” -Osho
I feel I’m always on a roller-coaster of feelings. How to get off it? I’ve tried just watching them all but as soon as one has gone, up comes something else!
Live each emotion that you feel. It is you.
Hateful, ugly, unworthy – whatever it is, actually be in it. First give the emotions a chance to come totally up into the conscious. Right now, by your effort of watchfulness you are repressing them in the unconscious. Then you get involved in your day-to-day work and you force them back again. That is not the way to get rid of them.
Let them come out; live them, suffer them. It will be difficult and tedious but immensely rewarding. Once you have lived them, suffered them and accepted them – that this is you, that you have not made yourself in this way so you need not condemn yourself, that this is the way you have found yourself…. Once they are lived consciously, without any repression, you will be surprised that they are disappearing on their own. Their force on you is becoming less; their grip on your neck is no longer that tight. And when they are going away there may be a time when you can start watching.
Once everything comes into the conscious mind it disperses, and when only the shadow is there, that is the time to become aware. Right now it will create schizophrenia; then it will create enlightenment.
Osho, The Transmission of the Lamp, Talk #6
When fear comes, what to do?
Why should you ask to do anything? When there is fear, be afraid! Why create a duality? When moments of fear come be fearful, tremble with fear, allow fear to take possession. Why this constant inquiry: What to do? Can’t you allow life in any way to take possession of you?
When love takes possession, what to do? Be loving! Don’t do anything – allow love to take possession of you. When fear comes tremble like a leaf in a strong wind. And it will be beautiful. When it has gone you will feel so serene and calm, as when a strong storm passes by everything is left calm and quiet after it. Why be always fighting something?
Fear comes – it is natural, absolutely natural. To think of a man who is without fear is impossible because he will be dead. Then somebody will be honking the horn on the road and a man without fear will go on, he will not bother. Then a snake will be on the path and a man without fear will not bother, he will go on. A man without fear will be absolutely foolish and stupid.
Fear is part of your intelligence; nothing wrong in it.
Fear simply shows there is death; and we human beings are here only for a few moments. That trembling says that we are not going to be permanently here, we are not eternally here; a few days more and you will be gone.
In fact because of fear man has been in deep search of religion; otherwise there would have been no point. No animal is religious because no animal is in fear.
No animal can be religious because no animals can be aware of death. Man is aware of death, every moment death is there, surrounds you from everywhere. Any moment you will be gone; that gives you a trembling. Why be afraid – tremble! But again the ego says: “No, you – afraid? No, this is not for you, this is for cowards. You are a brave man.”
It is not for cowards. Allow fear. Only one thing is to be understood: when you allow fear and you tremble, watch it, enjoy it, and in that watching you will transcend it. You will see the body is trembling, you will see the mind is trembling but you will come to feel a point within you, a deep center which remains unaffected. The storm passes by but somewhere deep within you is a center that is untouched: the center of the cyclone.
Allow fear, don’t fight with it. Watch what is happening. Go on watching. As your watching eye becomes more penetrating and intense – the body will be trembling, the mind will be trembling – deep within you will be consciousness, which simply is a witness, which only watches. It remains untouched, like a lotus flower in water. Only when you attain to that will you attain to fearlessness.
But that fearlessness is not being unafraid. That fearlessness is not bravery. That fearlessness is a realization that you are two – a part of you will die and a part of you is eternal. That part which is going to die is going to remain always afraid. And the part that is not going to die, which is immortal – for it there is no point in being afraid. Then a deep harmony exists.
You can use fear for meditation. Use all that you have for meditation so that you go beyond.
Osho, Talking Tao, Talk #4
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