Osho: on the failure of success

[Guest guest]

What Osho says below meshes with my own experience.

 

It was my material successes that showed me that

happiness does not lie in wealth. When I 'achieved'

what I was taught was the "American Dream" I became

so depressed I couldn't drag myself out of bed in the

morning. My world as I had known it ended when that

depression arose, and I began psychotherapy in the 80's.

 

Osho:

"In a poor society religion cannot be meaningful, because

people have not yet failed. Their search still carries meaning,

the outward search. They think if they can get a good house

everything will be okay; they think if they can get a little money

then everything will be okay. A poor man can live in illusion,

but not a rich man. And if you see a rich man living in illusion,

remember well, he is still poor, he has not succeeded yet.

 

A Buddha leaves the palace, a Mahavira leaves the kingdom.

They succeeded, and success failed them. They became alert

that the whole direction had been wrong, so they took an about-

turn. They moved into totally the opposite direction: they were

kings, they became beggars; they were clothed in the costliest

clothes possible, they became naked. It became a conversion:

success fails, and failure becomes a conversion.

 

Buy why does success fail? It fails because you were searching

not for wealth, you were searching not for power, you were

searching not for security and safety; you were not searching for

a house, you were searching for something else. You were

searching for the eternal home, from where there is no going away.

You were searching for eternal rest, you were searching for a peace

which lasts forever, nontemporal. That is what the search is: a

search for the home. It is not a search for any house outside, it

is a search for a state of being where you are at home. You were

not searching for wealth, you were searching for protection against

death; you were searching for a life which no death can destroy"

 

Melody:

Reading this I also realize that when my seeking for 'reputation

and material success' ended, the era of a seeking in a different

direction began. I began seeking love and acceptance. I began

seeking "unconditional" love and acceptance.

 

(Knowing, of course, that I was telling myself to take a deeper

look....to find a 'me' that was deeper than material and social

successes.)

 

Acceptance and admiration had before that always been automatic,

because I was always before 'succeeding' academically, in business,

materially, socially. When I got off the Track though.... I, for the

first time, began experiencing my 'unacceptability'. I was finally

without "power"....no financial power, no sexual power, no social

power, totally power-less.

 

And in that powerlessness I became very angry. Angry because

I was not 'home', and at the same time no longer 'loveable' to man.

I began essentially "demanding" love and acceptance.

 

(Demanding, of course, my own unconditionality.)

 

What I'm starting to 'get' now is that as long as I was seeking

love, I could not experience it....could not taste it. And as long

as I felt love and acceptance was being denied me, I would

keep seeking after it.

 

The other day I felt unconditional love and acceptance. I really

felt it. And I loved it.....for just a short while. Because as soon as

I felt it, tasted it, wallowed it, bathed in it.....I knew it was not

"That".

 

And so once again my success has 'failed', and a conversion....a 'turn

around'...begins.

 

Thank you, and friends for giving me what I asked for,

even though you knew it wasn't *It*. Thank you all for helping me to

taste the "failure of success" even faster.

 

love,

Melody