You’re not free

How can you love people when you need people? You can only use them. If I need you to make me happy, I’ve got to use you, I’ve got to manipulate you, I’ve got to find ways and means of winning you. I cannot let you be free. I can only love people when I have emptied my life of people. When I die to the need for people, then I’m right in the desert. In the beginning it feels awful, it feels lonely, but if you can take it for a while, you’ll suddenly discover that it isn’t lonely at all. It is solitude, it is aloneness, and the desert begins to flower. Then at last you’ll know what love is, what God is, what reality is. But in the beginning giving up the drug can be tough, unless you have a very keen understanding or unless you have suffered enough. It’s a great thing to have suffered. Only then can you get sick of it.

Spirituality is awareness, awareness, awareness, awareness, awareness, awareness. When someone gets angry with you, they don’t say there’s something wrong with them, they say there’s something wrong with you; otherwise they wouldn’t have been angry. Well, if you are angry, there’s something wrong with you. So you’d better cope with your anger. Stay with it and cope with it. It’s not mine. Whether there’s something wrong with me or not, I’ll examine that independently of your anger. I’m not going to be influenced by your anger.

The funny thing is that when I can do this without feeling any negativity toward

another, I can be quite objective about myself, too. Only a very aware person can refuse

to pick up the guilt and anger, can say, “You’re having a tantrum. Too bad. I don’t feel

the slightest desire to rescue you anymore, and I refuse to feel guilty.” I’m not going to

hate myself for anything I’ve done. That’s what guilt is. I’m not going to give myself a

bad feeling and whip myself for anything I have done, either right or wrong. I’m ready to

analyze it, to watch it, and say, “Well, if I did wrong, it was in unawareness.” Nobody

does wrong in awareness. That’s why theologians tell us very beautifully that Jesus could

do no wrong. That makes very good sense to me, because the enlightened person can do

no wrong. The enlightened person is free. Jesus was free and because he was free, he

couldn’t do any wrong. But since you can do wrong, you’re not free.