Ecstasy is downhill, misery is uphill !

In the morning for everybody there is a choice. And not only in the morning, every moment there is a choice to be miserable or to be happy.

You always choose to be miserable because there is an investment.

You always choose to be miserable because that has become a habit, a pattern, you have always done that.

You have become efficient at doing it, it has become a track.

The moment your mind has to choose, it immediately flows towards misery.

Misery seems to be downhill, ecstasy seems to be uphill. Ecstasy looks very difficult to reach – butit is not so.

The real thing is quite the opposite: ecstasy is downhill, misery is uphill. Misery is a very difficult thing to achieve, but you have achieved it, you have done the impossible – because miseryis so anti-nature.

Nobody wants to be miserable and everybody IS miserable.

Society has done a great job.

Education, culture, and the culturing agencies, parents, teachers –they have done a great job.

They have made miserable creatures out of ecstatic creators.

Every Child is born ecstatic. Every child is born a god. And every man dies a madman.

Unless you recover, unless you reclaim your childhood, you will not be able to become the white clouds I am talking about.

This is the whole work for you, the whole SADHANA – how to regain childhood, how to reclaim it. If you can become children again then there is no misery.

I don’t mean that for a child there are no moments of misery – there are.
But still there is no misery.

Try to understand this.

A child can become miserable, he can be unhappy, intensely unhappy in a moment, but he is so total in that unhappiness, he is so one with that unhappiness, that there is no division.

The child separate from unhappiness is not there. The child is not looking at his unhappiness separate,divided. The child IS unhappiness – he is so involved in it.

And when you become one with unhappiness, unhappiness is not unhappiness.

If you become so one with it, even that has a beautyof its own.So look at a child – an unspoilt child I mean. If he is angry, then his whole energy becomes anger;nothing is left behind, no hold-up. He has moved and become anger; there is nobody manipulating and controlling it.

There is no mind. The child has become anger – he is not angry, he has becomethe anger. And then see the beauty, the flowering of anger. The child never looks ugly – even inanger he looks beautiful. He just looks more intense, more vital, more alive – a volcano ready toerupt.

Such a small child, such a great energy, such an atomic being – with the whole universe toexplode.And after this anger the child will be silent. After this anger the child will be very peaceful.

After this anger the child will relax.

We may think it is very miserable to be in that anger, but the child is not miserable – he has enjoyed it.If you become one with anything you become blissful.

If you separate yourself from anything, evenif it is happiness, you will become miserable.

So this is the key.
To be separate as an ego is the base of all misery; to be one, to be flowing, with whatsoever life brings to you, to be in it so intensely, so totally, that you are no more, you are lost,then everything is blissful.

The choice is there, but you have even become unaware of the choice. You have been choosing the wrong so continuously, it has become such a dead habit, that you simply choose it automatically.

There is no choice left. Become alert.

Each moment when you are choosing to be miserable remember: this is your choice.

Even this mindfulness will help, the alertness that this is my choice and I am responsible, and thisis what I am doing to myself, this is my doing.

Immediately you will feel a difference.

The quality of mind will have changed.
It will be easier for you to move towards happiness.

And once you know that this is your choice, then the whole thing has become a game.

Then if you love to be miserable, be miserable, but remember, this is your choice and don’t complain.

There is nobody else who is responsible for it.

This is your drama. If you like this way, if you like a miserable way, if you want to pass through life in misery, then this is your choice, your game.

You are playing it.

Play it well!

OshO ❤️ 
CHAPTER 3. TO BE MISERABLE OR ECSTATIC...?
My Way: The Way of the White Clouds