Osho on Solving Worries, Eastern way to solve worries is meditation

Osho – And the deeper you go into the vertical, the more remote you go, then the farther from the world you go. Then the family is left on the surface; the anxieties of the day to day existence are left on the surface. They belong to the road, the traffic, the market. You simply move inside and they disappear.

Remember, there are two ways to encounter worries: one is to try to solve them on the surface — nobody has ever solved — another is to remove yourself to a remote corner of the mountain. The further you go away, the more the distance, the better you can see, because distance gives perspective. And when you can see better the worries start dissolving, The further away you move, the more worries automatically dissolve, Because now you are not feeding them by constantly remaining near them. Now you are not giving your attention to them — they wither away. And once you have reached to the farthest corner of your being, even you don’t know whether there are worries or not, whether they ever existed. You simply wonder.

This is the Eastern way to solve worries: to move inside to a remote corner. The Western way is to face the worries and try to solve them. And the West has been a failure. Nothing has helped — neither psychoanalysis nor other trends in psychiatry, nothing has helped — because everybody is trying to solve them on the surface. They may give you a little consolation, or they may make you more adjusted to the society; they may give you a little more confidence, they may make you normal, that’s all.

But ‘normal’ simply means normally-abnormal, nothing else. Normal simply means like everybody else — but how is everybody else? Everybody else is also neurotic, lukewarm neurotic. Psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and all trends in the West can make you more adjusted, normal, that’s all. The maladjustment disappears; you become adjusted. But what do you become adjusted to? If the whole society is sick, you become adjusted to sickness. If the whole society is neurotic, you become adjusted to the neurosis.

The Eastern way is totally different. It is not to become more adjusted to society — no, because society itself is ignorant, sick. To be adjusted to it is not the point. The point is to get more remote from the society so that you can find your own roots, your own grounding. Once you find your own grounding, worries will exist, they are part of life, but you are not worried by them. They exist and you tackle them on the surface, but you are not involved — you remain outside.

A real meditator becomes authentically an outsider. He remains outside. He remains at such a far away distance that he can look at himself as if he is looking at somebody else. Worries will be there, just like waves will be there on the surface of the ocean. But in the deeper layers of the ocean there are no waves. If you get identified with the waves, then there is trouble. This identification is the root cause of all misery. The more remotely you move, the more the identification dissolves; it breaks, it falls. Suddenly you are in the world but not of the world. Suddenly you have transcended.

There is only one transcendence and transcendence is the only way. And that transcendence is going deeper and deeper within yourself. Just witness your mind and the deeper you will move. Just remember that you are not the mind and the deeper you will move. Just remember that you are not to fall into the old trap of going into the past or the future. Just remember that you are not here to travel, but to be. You are not here to become something; you are already that which you can become. But just to know this being, what it is….

The West has been making vast tremendous efforts to become something. And the East has been doing only one thing, relaxing and knowing who they are. The becoming is not the point because becoming is travelling; you have to become something. The point is first to know who you are. You may already be the thing you want to become. And those who have known, have known that it is already the case. You are already that which you can become. You just have to become acquainted with this fact.

This fact is hidden deep in you. More significant facts are always hidden deeper. They are not on the surface, they are not on the skin — they are in the heart. Be a witness to the mind, and you will find remote corners of your being, unacquainted, unknown to you. You don’t know yourself. You know only a part, the porch of your house. You just move on the outside.

Source – Osho Book “Returning to the Source”