The moment you accept yourself you become open, you become vulnerable, you become receptive. The moment you accept yourself there is no need for any future because there is no need to improve upon anything. Then all is good, then all is good as it is. In that very experience life starts taking a new color, a new music arises.

If you accept yourself, that is the beginning of accepting all. If you reject yourself, you are basically rejecting the universe; if you reject yourself, you are rejecting existence. If you accept yourself, you have accepted existence; then there is nothing else to do but to enjoy, to celebrate. There is no complaint left, there is no grudge; you feel grateful. Then life is good and death is good, then joy is good and sadness is good, then to be with your beloved is good and to be alone is good. Then whatsoever happens is good because it happens out of the whole.

But you have been conditioned for centuries not to accept yourself. All the cultures of the world have been poisoning the human mind because they all depend on one thing; Improve yourself. They all create anxiety in you — anxiety is the tense state between that which you are and that which you should be. People are bound to remain anxious if there is a “should” in life. If there is an ideal that has to be fulfilled, how can you be at ease? How can you be at home? It is impossible to live anything totally because the mind is hankering for the future. And that future never comes- it cannot come. By the very nature of your desire it is impossible. When it comes, you will start imagining other things, you will start desiring other things. You can always imagine a better state of affairs. And you can always remain in anxiety, tense, worried—that’s how humanity has been living for centuries.

So I would like to say to you: Accept yourself as you are. And that is the most difficult thing in the world because it goes against your training, your education, your culture. From the very beginning you have been told how you should be. Nobody has ever told you that you are good as you are; they have all put programs in your mind. You have been programmed by parents, priests, politicians, teachers—you have been programmed for only one thing: Just go on improving yourself. Where ever you are, go on rushing for something else. Never rest. Work unto death.

My teaching is simple: Don’t postpone life. Don’t wait for tomorrow, it never comes. Live it today!

Accept yourself—that is the prayer. Accept yourself –that is the gratitude. Relax into your being—that is the way God wanted you to be. In no other way did he want you to be; otherwise he would have made you somebody else. He has made you you and nobody else. Trying to improve upon yourself is basically trying to improve upon God—which is just stupid, and you will get madder and madder in trying that. You will not arrive anywhere, you will have simply missed a great opportunity.

Extract form the Book “intimacy- Trusting oneself and the other “. Courtesy- OSHO International Foundation, Pune, India.