Shree Rajneesh is an Indian mystic and spiritual leader. Widely known as Osho, Rajneesh taught about meditation, love, and courage.
For him, every human being is capable of enlightenment, which can be achieved through unattachment from social conditioning and the false sense of identity.
He suggested that instead of reacting, one should respond to life wholly without allowing oneself to be limited by small patterns of thinking.
Osho’s contributions to enlightenment are seen in the following lessons he teaches.
The 9 Most Important Lessons By Osho We Should All Learn In School:
1. Experience life fully.
“Experience life in all possible ways, good and bad, bitter and sweet, dark and light, summer and winter. Experience all the dualities. Don’t be afraid of experience, because the more experience you have, the more mature you become.”
Experiencing life in all its facets is loving your fate, the amor fati that Friedrich Nietzsche talked about.
When you soak yourself fully to the experience, you understand more of the feelings rather than have vague ideas about them.
Like the Earth that allows each season to pass smoothly, you also have the choice to let every season of your life shapes you into the best version of yourself.
2. Be yourself.
“Drop the idea of becoming someone, because you are already a masterpiece. You cannot be improved. You have only to come to it, to know it, to realize it.”
We all have our unique energetic signatures. If others shine much brighter, it’s because they have come to realize their full potential.
Their presence doesn’t mean you should compare yourself or your life with theirs. Instead, they’re there to encourage you to acknowledge your light and realize your full potential too.
3. Don’t take life too seriously.
“Take hold of your own life. See that the whole existence is celebrating. These trees are not serious, these birds are not serious. The rivers and the oceans are wild, and everywhere there is fun, everywhere there is joy and delight. Watch existence, listen to the existence and become part of it.”
Life is meant to be lived. You can plan, you can set goals, but you should not get lost in the process.
Having fun doesn’t mean becoming passive or happy go lucky, it does mean loosening up a bit and allow yourself to celebrate life every moment.
4. Set free the one you love.
“If you love a flower, don’t pick it up. Because if you pick it up it dies and it ceases to be what you love. So if you love a flower, let it be. Love is not about possession. Love is about appreciation.”
It’s tempting to hold or possess the one you love. But if you do so, you’re not only killing it, but also killing yourself in the process.
Love will lose meaning when something or someone can’t breathe because of how tightly you hold them.
But when you allow them to be themselves, to let them go when they have to, love is full of meaning, especially when they choose to stay because they’re loving you back.
5. Listen to your gut.
“Listen to your being. It is continuously giving you hints, it is a still, small voice. It does not shout at you, that is true. And if you are a little silent you will start feeling your way.”
Your gut is the still small voice that constantly reminds you of your true being. When you listen to it, you could never be wrong.
All you have to do is to still yourself and be silent, it’s when your inner voice speaks loudly.
6. The choice to be happy or sad is solely dependent on you.
“You feel good, you feel bad, and these feelings are bubbling from your own unconsciousness, from your own past. Nobody is responsible except you. Nobody can make you angry, and nobody can make you happy.”
Blaming other people for how they made you feel is taking power away from yourself. Your emotions don’t depend on how others treat you or on how a situation goes, rather, it is shaped by your perceptions of people and situations.
Most often, your emotions are triggered by similar situations in the past where you’ve been hurt badly. But then the past is the past.
You’re in the now moment where you have the power to change your perception or your reality.
7. Be love.
“Falling in love you remain a child, rising in love you mature. By and by love becomes not a relationship, it becomes a state of your being. Not that you are in love, now you are love.”
Loving is needing an object to be the recipient of that love. But when you become love, you don’t need anything or any person to express that love.
You just feel love because that is what you are.
8. Everyone is unique in their own way.
“Nobody is superior, nobody is inferior, but nobody is equal either. People are simply unique, incomparable. You are you, I am I. I have to contribute my potential to life. You have to contribute your potential to life. I have to discover my own being. You have to discover your own being.”
Each person has the same chemical make up in their bodies. Yet each carries a blueprint that is unique unto themselves.
In this collective evolution, seeing each other as separate limits our ability to become who we truly are.
All because we are connected to only one Source that wants us to contribute to the world our individual gifts without feeling either above from or below than others.
9. Your concept of yourself is not yours.
“Your whole idea about yourself is borrowed, borrowed from those who have no idea of who they are themselves.”
Don’t believe when others say you’re good for nothing or are a nobody.
Every idea that comes from a person is a projection of who they are. They speak things out of what’s inside in their hearts and minds and on the experiences they have been through.
No one knows who the real person inside you except you. Strive to know who you are so that you’ll have a clear idea of yourself and don’t need to borrow ideas from others.
