I Am Utterly Miserable. How Can I Get Out Of My Misery?*

Vandan, I have never come across a person who is utterly miserable. You are tolerating it, you are existing with it, you are living with it. If it is so bad one should stop breathing! Why should one go on living?

It can't be so bad. Maybe you love to exaggerate. There are people who always like superlatives, who magnify everything. Small miseries of course there are, but what big misery can you have? Where will you have it? I cannot conceive of any misery that can be so bad that you can call it absolute; otherwise one will simply die, immediately.

So one thing, remember, stop exaggerating. That is also a way of the ego. The ego is so strange that it wants to exaggerate everything. Even if it is misery it will magnify it, it will make a big fuss about it. There may be nothing much in it: if you go to the roots you may find a mouse, but you are talking about elephants.

And I know you, Vandan. I have never seen you utterly miserable. You look perfectly normal. Unless all normal people are utterly miserable... just the ego has the habit of magnifying.

A boy came running home from school. He was breathing hard, puffing, perspiring. He told his mother, "Somehow God saved me. A tiger is following me, a very dangerous tiger, a very ferocious tiger."

The mother said, "You stop exaggerating! I have told you a million times not to exaggerate, and again you are doing it. Where is that tiger?"

The boy showed her from the window. A very small dog, thin, lean, hungry, was standing outside. And the mother said, "This is the tiger? You go upstairs, pray to God and ask his forgiveness. And never exaggerate again. Enough is enough!"

So the boy went upstairs. After five minutes he went back to the mother, and the mother said, "Did you pray?"

He said, "Yes, I prayed, and do you know what God said? He said, 'You don't be worried. When for the first time I saw that dog I myself thought that it was a ferocious tiger. So nothing to be worried about. I myself was deceived, so what about you? And I am so big, still I thought it is a very dangerous tiger. I was just getting ready to run away, then I had another look and found: oh no, it is just a dog. And you are a small child, so if you got frightened it is natural.“

Misery is not so big as you make out. So the first thing is to reduce it to the right proportions. Before you can get out of it let the tiger disappear. Be very factual. If you really want to transform your life, be factual. You cannot get out of fictions. You can get out of facts; facts can be tackled, but fictions cannot be tackled.

But this is the way of the mind, the way of the ego, to magnify everything. It makes everything look big. And then of course you start suffering in a big way. The cause is not so big, but the effect can be very big – it depends on you.

Look again, consider again, reconsider the whole situation. What is it that you are calling "utterly miserable"? And then you will find ordinary facts of life. But we don't want to be ordinary. The ego hankers to be extraordinary. Even if it is misery we would like to be extraordinary.

Somebody asked George Bernard Shaw, "Where would you like to go when you die, to heaven or to hell?"

He said, "Wherever it is, that does not matter. What matters is: I want to be the first. Even if it is hell, I want to be the first. I don't want to be second to anybody. Hence I think hell will be better, because in heaven Buddha and Jesus and Zarathustra... and there are so many competitors. And I will have to stand in a queue, and that I hate! I am ready to go to hell, I am ready to suffer in hell, but I want to be the first."

The ego is always hankering to be the first. It says, "My misery is bigger than anybody else's. Whatsoever I am, I am bigger, I am special, I am extraordinary."<…>

The first thing for you is to bring things down to the level of reality. It is difficult, Vandan, particularly so for a woman. They live in fancy. When you fall in love you think you have fallen in love with a Greek god, and by the time the honeymoon is finished you know he is nothing but a goddamned Greek! Within seven days the Greek god is nothing but a goddamned Greek.

And again it will happen. Again you will fall in love, and again you will create a great fancy, you will create projections. And all your projections are going to be shattered sooner or later, because reality has no obligation to fulfill your projections.

So first bring down your idea of misery to the fact, to the real. And then it is not difficult to get out of it. Then the second thing is to be aware of it. Just be aware of it, and you are out of it – because you can be aware only if you are not it.

That is the miracle of awareness. When you observe something one thing is certain, absolutely certain: that you are not it. The observer is never the observed. The observed is there as an object confronting you. You are the observer, you are the subject.

So misery is there, pain is there or pleasure, or whatsoever experience is there – you are not it. You are out of it!

Two ham actors were moaning about how tough things were in the motion picture business.

"I haven't had a part for over ten years," one of the thespians sighed.

"That's nothing," the other ham said. "I've not worked since sound pictures came in."

"That's really tough."

"You bet it is. I wish to hell I could figure some way to get out of this business."

For forty years you are not in the business, and you are still figuring out how to get out of it!

Just watch. These two steps, Vandan: first, bring your misery to the level of reality, and then watch it – because only reality can be observed; fictions cannot be observed, you become identified with them. Once the reality is there, it is objective; watch it, and suddenly a great realization happens. You are the watcher, you are out of it.

You ask me, "How can I get out of it?" Vandan, you ARE out of it. Right now you are out of it! It is only an illusion that you are in it. If you want to believe you can go on believing that you are in it. Otherwise you can snap out of it any moment. Try. Try to snap out of it. Snap your fingers and slap your face and wake up!

*Osho, The Dhammapada, Volume 11. Discourse 10

Updated on 12-11-2018