MAINTAINING A BALANCE BETWEEN EFFORT AND NO-EFFORT

MAINTAINING A BALANCE BETWEEN EFFORT AND NO-EFFORT. ….
Once that balance is there, meditation comes like a spring and you become full of flowers.
Your life all the splendour and all the joy that existence can give to you -- it is infinite…..

“ Meditation is not achieved through effort, it is achieved through surrender. All the effort that is made, is made to make surrender possible. Once surrender becomes possible then you are ready to receive the gift. 

Effort is needed, but not for meditation; effort is needed only to prepare you to receive the gift. Meditation always comes as a gift; hence it is never food for the ego, it cannot be because it is not your achievement at all. On the contrary, it happens only when the ego has been totally surrendered.

You cannot say 'I have found it,' you can only say, 'God has found me.' You cannot say, you cannot brag 'This is my achievement, my realisation,' because it happens when you are not, hence how can it be your realisation and your achievement? It is god's grace.

But it is a very complex phenomenon.

There are two kinds of misunderstandings about meditation.
One is that no effort is needed. Then why make any effort? Whenever it is going to happen it will happen -- what can we do about it?

That is a misunderstanding. You can do something, not to achieve meditation but to prepare yourself to be receptive.

The other misunderstanding is that because effort is needed to prepare, then effort is essential, and you achieve meditation through your effort. 

So: go on making effort. If you are not achieving it, that means your effort is still not enough, so make more effort, put more intensity into it, put more energy into it, get more involved.

Both are misunderstandings.

Effort is needed but not for meditation. Effort is needed only up to a point. 

It has nothing to do with meditation, but it is very essential too, because unless you are ready you will miss the gift. 

The gift is arriving every moment, it is showering on everybody, but people are missing it because they don't have any space to absorb it, they don't have any place to allow it entry into their being.
It is all full of rubbish, all full of junk.

This has to become one of the most important understandings, that effort is needed, yet meditation is a gift. 

It is needed for surrender and surrender is needed for meditation. 

So there is no direct connection with the effort, but a very indirect connection is there.

So avoid both pitfalls and just be in the middle. It is a razor's edge: if you fall here, you fall into a lake, if you fall on the other side you fall into a well.

You have to keep yourself like a tightrope walker; avoiding both pitfalls, avoiding both extremes, maintaining a balance between effort and no-effort.

Once that balance is there, meditation comes like a spring and you become full of flowers.

Your life has all the splendour and all the joy that existence can give to you -- it is infinite. “

OSHO
Darshan Diary - The Imprisoned Splendour (Unpublished), Chapter # 19, Chapter Name – None , Date - 19 June 1980 Evening, Venue - Chuang Tzu Auditorium, Rajneesh Ashram, Pune, India

“ Do my meditations, but not wilfully. Don't force them, rather let them happen.
Float in them, abandon yourself in them. be absorbed, but not wilfully.

Don't manipulate because when you manipulate you are divided, you become two: the manipulator and the manipulated. 

Once you are two, heaven and hell are created immediately.

Then there is a vast distance between you and the truth.
Don't manipulate.
Allow things to happen. “

OSHO
The Orange Book , page 134.