Courage: The Joy of Living Dangerously (Osho Insights for a New Way of Living)

by Osho

Don’t call it uncertainty—call it wonder. Don’t call it insecurity—call it freedom I am not here to give you a dogma—a dogma makes one certain. I am not here to give you any promise for the future—any promise for the future makes one secure. I am here simply to make you alert and aware—that is, to be here now, with all the insecurity that life is, with all the uncertainty that life is, with all the danger that life is. I know you come here seeking some certainty, some creed, some “ism,” somewhere to belong to, someone to rely upon. You come here out of your fear. You are searching for a sort of beautiful imprisonment—so that you can live without any awareness. I would like to make you more insecure, more uncertain—because that’s how life is, that’s how God is. When there is more insecurity and more danger, the only way to respond to it is by awareness.

Meditation is just a courage to be silent and alone. Slowly slowly, you start feeling a new quality to yourself, a new aliveness, a new beauty, a new intelligence—which is not borrowed from anybody, which is growing within you. It has roots in your existence. And if you are not a coward, it will come to fruition, to flowering.

Nobody wants to be lonely. Everybody wants to belong to a crowd—not only one crowd, but many crowds. A person belongs to a religious crowd, a political party, a Rotary Club … and there are many other small groups to belong to. One wants to be supported twenty-four hours a day because the false, without support, cannot stand. The moment one is alone, one starts feeling a strange craziness. For so many years you believed yourself to be somebody, and then suddenly in a moment of loneliness you start feeling you are not that. It creates fear: then who are you?