Jealousy

It will go... it will go, because it only creates suffering. The moment you become perfectly aware that it only creates suffering it will drop of its own accord. We can carry a thing on only if we hope that something beautiful is going to happen out of it – but never has any beautiful thing happened out of jealousy, and it is not going to happen ever. It simply poisons your sources of love. It poisons all possibilities of your growth, it poisons all relationships. It creates only smoke around you.

There is no question of finding a way out. The question is to see how you go in. Going out is not the question at all. You are out of it. The only thing to watch is how one goes into it. The moment you have seen the process of going into it, you will not go into it. That very awareness becomes the disappearance of jealousy.

Next time it happens, just watch it. Become very objective, a detached watcher, just to see what exactly it is, how it arises just like a small seed, and then how it grows and becomes a big tree and how you are completely lost in it. Just see the whole process of its growth and just see how you help it to grow. Don’t be in a hurry to drop it and don’t be in a hurry to get out of it; that’s where people are wrong. People are in such a hurry to get out that they can’t see how they get in, and that is the secret: just watch how you get in. Once you have seen the whole process and the misery that comes out of it, in that very understanding something evaporates. It is not a question of dropping – just an old habit evaporates.

Suddenly you are out of it and laughing, and suddenly you see the whole foolishness of it, the whole stupidity of it. And then one is surprised at how one suffered so long because of such a stupid thing! So I will not tell you how to get out of it: I will tell you to watch how you get in. Never be worried about dropping a thing – always remain concerned about understanding it. Dropping is not the question at all. It is just as if somebody asks how not to go through the wall. We will say ’If you can see that this is a wall you will not go through it.’ It is not a question of how not to go through the wall; the only thing is to see clearly where the wall is and where the door is. If you see clearly, you will go through the door; you will not go through the wall. It is only a question of clarity. But down the ages we have been told to change our habits, to drop this, to drop that, to create this character, this style of life, this virtue, and nobody has really been telling the secret. The secret is: just watch who you are, how you function, how you move into things. And forget the question of dropping, because if you have already decided to drop something, your observation will be biased. If you have already decided to be against something how can you watch it? 

Nobody can watch one’s enemy; one wants to avoid him. If you have already decided that something is ugly, bad, evil, then you start looking sideways; you don’t encounter it. If it is evil, who wants to see it? You want to escape somehow – and you cannot escape unless you encounter the evil. So don’t call it ’evil, don t call it names. Even to call it ’jealousy’ is already to condemn it. Call it X, Y, Z. Say ’I suffer from X, an unknown quality – something mysterious – that makes me suffer, so I have to watch this X and see what it is.’
And once you can watch rightly clarity arises, and clarity is transformation. To understand a thing is to be free of it. To be aware is enough. It is in this sense that Socrates has said ’Knowledge is virtue.’ 

To know a thing is enough – it becomes your virtue; your character is immediately transformed. My emphasis is not on character at all but on consciousness. Character follows consciousness like a shadow. You need not be concerned about a shadow; a shadow will come automatically. So while you are here, go through groups, watch – it will arise many times – and watch it in a very friendly way. It is something in you; you have to become acquainted with it. It is part of you; just by denying it, nothing is helped. You have to learn about it. And be unbiased, unprejudiced. Remain open: as if we don’t know what it is – good or bad, we will see. If it is good then it will grow with awareness; if it is bad it will disappear with awareness. When you bring light into a dark room, darkness disappears, but you can see the paintings on the walls; they don’t disappear. With awareness growing all that is good remains, becomes more clear, more prominent – you can see it better, you can enjoy it better, you can live it better – and all that is bad starts disappearing like darkness. It is going to happen!

Relax more and more into the work. Make it more and more loving and prayerful, and that becomes meditation. And finally the work has to become meditation. One can only live in meditation if meditation is not something apart that you do it for one hour and then the rest of your life you do something else. Meditation cannot go very deep unless it is spread all over your life, unless twenty four hours a day become involved in meditation, but to do that, you have to transform the quality of your work.

Halleujah!

Osho