Osho Active Meditations

Osho on Half Hearted Effort in Meditation

Question - I am trying to do the meditations, making an effort, But the effort seems to be Half Hearted. How can I make it Wholehearted?

Osho - IT IS HALFHEARTED BECAUSE YOU ARE WITHHOLDING YOURSELF. If you are jumping, dancing, screaming, you are not moving totally in it because of some fear. That fear creates a division. You are afraid that if you move totally in it, it may not be possible for you to come back. That is the fear. If you express your madness wholeheartedly, the fear is there that you may not be able to come back from the madness, that it may take over, it may possess you. This fear creates a division. The major part stays in control and only the minor part is allowed to move. Then the movement becomes false because it is just imposed. The major part is still in control.

Lose control! And don't be afraid; fear is the barrier. The division comes through fear. Then you go on protecting yourself and, at the same time, allowing. Both are contradictory. And because of this contradiction, your effort is wasted. Energy is dissipated because you are fighting with yourself. One part is expressing, another part is controlling. You are contradictory, you are fighting. In this inner fight, your energy is wasted.

Either move totally, or don't move. Decide: "If I am going to do it, then I will get totally involved. Otherwise, I'm not going to do it." But, remain whole. And, I am here. If you cannot allow yourself to lose control here, while I am working on you, you will not be able to lose yourself totally when you are at home. Don't be afraid to lose control because I am here; I can help you in every way. And once you know that when you let go totally, once you know the bliss of it, the ecstasy of it even for a single moment....

That total let-go will allow you to have a glimpse of the real, and the glimpse will become the foundation. You will never be afraid again. Once you have moved to hell itself, to the very depths of madness, and you have come back again, for the first time you will be in control, never before. You were never in control before, because the fear was always there. The fear shows that you are not in control. Once you have gone to the very roots of your being and have returned back, you are in control. Now you no longer have to be afraid. Remember this.

Use this camp more wisely. While I am here watching you, observing you. you need not be afraid. If you are afraid here, then back at home you will not be able to let go. This is the last day, so be in a total let-go. And I promise you, there is nothing to fear. You are not going to lose anything by losing yourself in it; you are simply going to gain.

You ale not going to lose anything except your madness; you have nothing to lose. Karl Marx has said somewhere that the proletariat have nothing to lose but their chains. I would like to say the same thing to you. Man has nothing to lose except his chains, except his slavery, except his bondage, except his misery and hell. You have nothing to lose; don't be afraid. What have you got to lose? A naked man, afraid of losing his clothes. What have you got to lose?!

Move wholeheartedly. Once you move totally into the meditations there will be no problem. Once you have experienced it, once you have tasted the feeling -- the freedom, the ecstasy that comes when you are in a total let-go -- the fear will disappear forever. Only through freedom can the fear disappear. And that freedom can come only to a man who is whole, not divided in fragments.

Source - from Osho Book "The New Alchemy : To Turn You On"

Related Discourses on Osho Dynamic Meditation: