Nothing fails like success
Most of us think that we are miserable because we don’t have everything we ever wanted. Because we are not smart enough, talented enough, successful enough. Because we don’t have enough money, etc.
You think that successful people are happy. Actually, the more successful someone is the less happy they become.
When you are poor and all your efforts are about providing yourself and your family with what you need… you have little thought about the inner emptiness… who cares, as long as you can fill your stomach.
But once you fulfill the base layers of Maslow’s hierarchy, the yearning for inner peace, inner riches starts to become strong, loud, and misery creating.
And the more material success you have achieved the more miserable you become.
Most of the people that approach me to have me measure their vibration are successful. And miserable. A vibration above 170 is a cause for celebration for me.
So, why are more successful people even more miserable? Because they can see that all their efforts is taking them away from “home”.
Here is an Osho talk about that:
Osho,
I am a student from Japan. ‘Where there is a will, there is a way.’ Please tell me about it, Osho.
The proverb, ‘Where there is a will, there is a way’ exists in almost every language, in every civilization. But nobody has looked into the psychology of it. The will creates its own way, because the will takes you away from yourself. If you ask me, I would rather like to change this proverb to, ‘No will, no way, and you are at home.’ Why go unnecessarily traveling around the world? – because no way leads anywhere, no will leads anywhere except into frustration, misery, failure, even if you succeed.
There is another proverb which says, ‘Nothing succeeds like success.’ But my own experience is, ‘Nothing fails like success.’ But we are such hypocrites, pretenders. That when you succeed you know you have not gained anything; on the contrary, this stupid idea of success has taken away all your life, and all its songs, and all its poetry, and all its dances. You sacrifice yourself before the false goddess of success, and now what have you got? But it needs courage to declare to the world, ‘You think I have succeeded? That is an outward interpretation of my state. My inner experience is, ‘Nothing fails like success.’ But all of our societies have been teaching you to succeed, to have a strong willpower, because, ‘Wherever there is will, there is a way.’ You will find the way, but those ways lead nowhere; they are dead-end streets. And meanwhile, your life is slipping from your hands.
But willpower has been supported by thousands of thinkers and philosophers without ever going into the inner reality of it. To will means you are not satisfied with yourself. It means you are not fulfilled, something more is needed, that you are not at ease. You have to go somewhere, you have to become someone. The very existence of will is against your being – it degrades your being into becoming. Then there is search and then there is longing, and naturally you will find a way, just to go away from yourself.
But this is not the right thing to do – this is suicidal; you are committing suicide. The farther you go on that way of the will, the more you will find yourself lost. This has happened to almost the whole of humanity – they have forgotten who they are. They have gone so far away from themselves that they have forgotten their home.
Drop the will, and immediately that way disappears like a dream. It has no reality of its own. The will gives its power to the way, it creates the way.
So the proverb is right, but those who follow it are wrong. One need not have any will, and one need not have any way. Then sit inside your home and play a bamboo flute. There is no need to go anywhere because you are already there, where you would really like to be.
Now, Osho stops here. He is almost never (at least I haven’t found any place) talks about doing stuff, doing it well, for no reason other than doing stuff well, creating, and loving it.
I live in that paradigm, doing things and doing it well, successfully, 99% of the time: I do things, and when the purpose, the why, the ‘goal’ shows up, I drop it. Sometimes it’s sticky, but so far I have been able to drop it every time.
And I do a lot of things, but I don’t do them ‘in order to’ get to any place, I do them for no reason.
The hardest part is the main issues: love, money, and health. To do things that have anything to do with love, money, health for no reason, while they may open the space for love, money, and health… that is art itself, that is the ph.D. level of enlightenment. I am still just a ph.D. candidate… that 1% is still missing, and may be missing forever.
And this ‘for no reason’ has to be everywhere: saying things for no reason, buying things for no reason, eating things for no reason…
From the outside it looks the same action as someone’s who is willful, calculating and does things for a reason, for a purpose.
The difference is in the outside, in the being. All pushing, all forcing, all anguish, all lack, all fixing is gone, and the action becomes part of a dance, graceful, joyful, enjoyable, in the moment.
And that is the crux of the matter: all reasons, all purposes are ‘designed’ to take you out of the now moment, by taking your attention, your intention, your focus on a moment somewhere in the future, when the ‘result’ of your action is materialized.
And there goes your vertical plane living, there goes your peace of mind, there goes your joyful living… going, gone. You land, face first, on the horizontal plane, the plane of because, the plane of doing, the plane of mind, the plane of will, the plane of misery.