Osho: Challenge is Life

Go on trying and by and by one becomes more skillful. Just time is needed. And fear is natural, but don't be overpowered by it. It's natural, so accept it. Much will start surfacing in. Everybody carries so much potentiality that they don't even dream about. Their dreams are as their reality... just superficial. You don't know what you are carrying within you. If a little effort is made, more and more of your inner being will be made available to you.

Fear is natural because one is moving in darkness. The inner journey is very dark. Light comes but that is only at the end. First one has to pass through the tunnel, hence trust is needed. The world of light, of course artificial light, is no more there and the world of real light has not yet happened. Just in between the two there is a tunnel of darkness. The mind says 'Go back! At least there was some light. Maybe the light was outside you, but still it was. Maybe it was artificial, but at least it was. Go back! Cling to theories and words and philosophies'.

It is just like when you dive deep into water and an urge arises to go back to the surface. This is a greater depth than that. No ocean is so deep as the inner reality. So one trembles, feels afraid, lost, uprooted. One feels unskillful because the new is so new and you have never practised it. But by and by if you go on with courage and you take the challenge of the unknown, that very challenge will create the capacity to encounter it.

Once you accept a challenge, you start becoming capable of encountering it. Nothing else is needed because the capacity is lying there within you fast asleep because you have never used it.

So whenever there is a challenge, never reject it... welcome it. Challenge is life and life-giving. So whenever there is a challenge, immediately take the opportunity and thank God that again the unknown is before you. Again you are afraid, good. Again the security is no more there, good. Again you move in the insecure. Again the adventure starts and you don't know where you are going you don't know where you will reach, or whether you will ever reach.

You don't even know who you are because a man knows himself only by something that he is capable of doing. Somebody says, 'I am a doctor'. He knows himself because he can do certain things. somebody says, 'I am an advocate', because he knows that he can do something. Somebody says, 'I am a carpenter'. We know ourselves by our doing.

When you move into the unknown, you cannot do anything. You don't know where you are going, what is going to happen. Every moment is going to be a surprise, something just out of the blue. Sooner or later you start feeling that you are losing your identity. So the greatest fear is of losing one's identity, the image, the ego, the nameplate. You cannot carry it into the unknown.

Fear is there but don't pay much attention to it. It is there because of the challenge. Pay attention to the challenge. When you look at the challenge you will not feel bad about the fear; you will say that this is natural.

When one has to climb an Everest fear is natural. I don't see anything abnormal in it. In fact if a man is going to climb Everest and he doesn't feel any fear, he is abnormal; something is perverted about him. Maybe he is insensitive, an idiot, stupid, unaware. When a man starts moving, climbing the Himalayas, it is natural that fear will be felt.

But if when you move on the street of your town you are afraid, then it is abnormal. If in the known you fear, it is abnormal. If you feel fear with the unknown, it is indicative, symptomatic, that there is something that you don't know, with which you are unfamiliar, a strange country you are entering, the language of which is not known to you, and you have no map. There is every possibility that you may be lost forever and may not be able to come back. Fear is natural.

But take the challenge, focus on the challenge; then fear is just the shadow of the challenge. Never pay much attention to shadows because if you do, shadows tend to become realities. Always pay attention to the reality. When you are focused on reality you can see what is a shadow and what is real. The unreal has no more influence on you.

If you are really interested in mysticism, become a mystic. You have taken the first step, hence the fear. Accept the challenge, mm?

Osho, "Beloved of my Heart"