At Least Make Yourself Happy - OSHO

If you really want to be happy you have to remain young, alive, available to crying, laughter, available to all dimensions, flowing all over, streaming. Then you will remain happy. But remember, you will not get any sympathy. People may throw rocks at you, but that is worth it. People may think that you are irreligious, they may condemn you, they may call names to you, but don't be worried about it. It doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is your happiness.


And you have to undo many things; only then can you become happy. Whatsoever has been done by the society has to be undone. Wherever you are stuck -- you were going to laugh and your father looked at you with anger and said, "Stop!" -- you will have to start again from there. Tell your father, "Please, now I am going to again start laughing." Somewhere inside your head your father is still holding you: "Stop!" Have you watched? If you meditate deeply you will come to see and hear your parental voices within. You were going to cry and the mother stopped you, and of course you were helpless and you had to compromise to survive. There was no other way. You had to depend on these people and they had their conditions; otherwise, they wouldn't give you milk, they wouldn't give you food, they wouldn't give you any support. And how can a small child exist without the support? He has to compromise. He says, "Okay. Just to survive, I will follow whatsoever you say." So by and by, he becomes false. By and by, he goes against himself. He wanted to laugh but the father was not allowing it, so he kept quiet. By and by, he becomes a pretender, a hypocrite.

And a hypocrite can never be happy, because happiness is being true to your life-energy. Happiness is a function of being true. Happiness is not somewhere, that you go and purchase it. Happiness is not awaiting you somewhere, that you have to find the path and reach it. No, happiness is a function of being true, authentic. Whenever you are true, you are happy. Whenever you are untrue, you are unhappy.

And I will not say to you that if you are untrue you will be unhappy in your next life, no. This is all nonsense. If you are untrue, right now you are unhappy. Watch -- whenever you are untrue, you feel uneasiness, unhappiness, because the energy is not flowing. The energy is not river-like; it is stuck, dead, frozen. And you would like to flow. Life is flow; death is frozenness. Unhappiness comes because many of your parts are frozen. They were never allowed to function and, by and by, you have learned the trick to control them. Now you have even forgotten that you are controlling something. You have lost your roots in the body. You have lost your roots in the truth of your body.

People are living like ghosts; that's why they are miserable. When I see inside you, rarely do I come across an alive man. People have become like ghosts, phantoms. You are not in your body; you are somewhere about your head hovering like a ghost, just like a balloon around the head. Just a small thread is joining you to the body. That thread keeps you alive, that's all, but it is not a delight. You will have to become conscious, you will have to meditate, and you will have to drop all the controls. You will have to unlearn, undo, and then for the first time you will again become flowing.

Of course, discipline is needed, not as control but as awareness. A controlled discipline is a deadening phenomenon. When you are alert, aware, a discipline comes easily out of that awareness -- not that you force it, not that you plan it. No, moment to moment your awareness decides how to respond. And an alert person responds in such a way that he remains happy, and he does not create unhappiness for others.

Remain happy, and don't create any situation for anybody to be unhappy. If you can help, make others happy. If you cannot, then at least make yourself happy.

Osho