The Art of Letting Things Be - OSHO

...The cyclone has gone and you will now be centred, centred as you never were before. And once you know the art of letting things be, you will know one of the master keys that opens all the inner doors. Then whatsoever the case is, let it be; don’t avoid it.

If just for three months you can be in total solitude, in total silence, not fighting with anything, allowing everything to be, whatsoever it is, within three months the old will be gone and the new will be there. But the secret is allowing it to be...howsoever fearful and painful, howsoever apparently dangerous and deathlike.

Many moments will come when you will feel as if you will go mad if you don’t do something and involuntarily you will start to do something. You may know that nothing can be done, but you will not be in control and you will start to do something.

It is just as if you are moving through a dark street in the night, at midnight, and you feel fear because there is no one around and the night is dark and the street is unknown — so you start whistling. What can whistling do? You know it can do nothing. Then you start singing a song. You know nothing can be done by singing a song — the darkness cannot be dispelled, you will remain alone — but still it diverts the mind. If you start whistling, just by whistling you gain confidence and you forget the darkness. Your mind moves into whistling and you start feeling good.

Nothing has happened. The street is the same, the darkness is the same the danger, if there is any, is there, but now you feel more protected. All is the same, but now you are doing something. You can start chanting a name, a mantra: that will be a sort of whistling. It will give you strength but that strength is dangerous, that strength will again become a problem, because that strength is going to be your old ego. You are reviving it.

Remain a witness and allow whatsoever happens to happen.

Fear has to be faced to go beyond it.

Anguish has to be faced to transcend it. And the more authentic the encounter, the more looking at it face to face, the more looking at things as they are, the sooner the happening will be there.
It takes time only because your authenticity is not intense.

So you may take three days, three months or three lives; it depends on the intensity. Really, three minutes can also do, three seconds can also do. But then you will have to pass through a tremendous hell with such intensity that you may not be able to bear it, to tolerate it. If one can face whatsoever is hidden in oneself, it passes, and when it has gone you are different because all that has left you was part of you before and now it is no longer a part.

So don’t ask what to do. There is no need to do anything. Non-doing, witnessing, effortlessly facing whatsoever is, not even making a slight effort, just allowing it to be....
Remain passive and let it pass. It always passes. When you do something, that is the undoing because then you interfere.

And who will interfere? Who is afraid? The same that is the disease will interfere. The same ego that has to be left behind will interfere. I told you that the ego is part of the society. You left the society but you don’t want to leave the part that society has given to you. It is rooted in society; it cannot live without society. So either you have to leave it or you have to create a new society in which it can live.

To be solitary means not to create an alternative society. Just move out of society and then whatsoever society has given you will leave you. You will have to drop it. It will be painful because you are so adjusted to it, everything is so arranged. It has become such a comfort to be adjusted, where everything is convenient.
When you change and move alone, you are leaving all comforts, all conveniences, all that society can give — and when society gives something to you, it also takes something from you: your liberty, your soul.

So it is an exchange — and when you are trying to get to your soul in its purity you have to stop the bargaining.
It will be painful, but if you can pass through it, the highest bliss is just near. Society is not as painful as loneliness. Society is tranquilizing, society is convenient and comfortable but it gives you a sort of sleep. If you move out of it inconvenience is bound to be there. All types of inconveniences will be there. Those inconveniences have to be suffered with the understanding that they are part of solitude and part of regaining yourself.

You will come out of it new, with a new glory and dignity, a new purity and innocence.

The Book of Secrets
- OSHO