“If you don’t love yourself, you will never be able to love anybody else. If you are not kind to yourself, you cannot be kind to anyone else. Your so-called saints who are so hard on themselves are only pretending that they are kind to others. It is not possible. Psychologically it is impossible. If you cannot be kind to yourself, how can you be kind to others?
As you are with yourself, so you are with others. Let this be the foundation. If you hate yourself, you will hate others — and you have been taught to hate yourself. Nobody has ever said to you, “Love yourself!” … We are always used to thinking that to love, we need someone else. But if you don’t learn it with yourself, it won’t be possible for you to practice it with others.
Every love story is unstable. Sooner or later, every love story becomes very poisonous. And how does that happen? Everyone says they are loving, both constantly say they love. The father says he loves the child; the child says he loves the father. The mother says she loves her daughter, the daughter says the same. Brothers say they love each other. The whole world talks about love, sings about love… but can you find a place so utterly devoid of love?
There is not a drop of love — but there are mountains of words, Himalayas of poetry about love. It seems all this poetry is only for compensation. Because we cannot love, we somehow have to believe through poetry and singing that we do. What we lack in life, we put into poetry… what we lack in life, we put into the movie, into the novel. Love is completely absent because the first step has not yet been taken.
The first step is: accept yourself as you are; drop all the “shoulds.” Do not carry any “shoulds” in your heart. You are not meant to be someone else; you are not expected to do something that does not belong to you. You are just to be yourself. Relax and just be yourself. Respect your individuality and have the courage to sign with your own signature. Do not imitate the signatures of others.
When you are not trying to be someone else, then you simply relax; then grace arrives. Then you are full of grandeur, abundance, and harmony… because there is no conflict! There is nowhere to go, nothing to fight for, no reason to force yourself… You become innocent.
And in that innocence, you will feel compassion and love for yourself. You will feel so happy with yourself that even if the Divine comes and knocks at your door and says, “Would you like to become somebody else?”, you will say, “Have you gone mad? I am perfect! Thank you very much, but never do such a thing again — I am perfect as I am.”
The moment you have said to existence, “I am perfect as I am, I am happy as I am,” that is what in the East we call shraddha — trust. Then you have accepted yourself, and in accepting yourself, you have accepted your Creator. By denying yourself, you deny your Creator.
Just see the point! Just be yourself and remember that you cannot be anything else, whatever you do. All effort is in vain. You just have to be yourself…”
— Osho, “A Sudden Clash of Thunder”
