Fear disapates …

Osho, I am so full of joy – and yet full of fear.

Bring all your energy into your joy and the fear will go away. Do not pay attention to the fear, pay no attention to it at all, because the more attention you give it, the longer it will last. Go all the way in a direction that brings you joy, then fear disappears, just as darkness disappears when you turn on a light. Joy is light. And joy is the beginning of a great pilgrimage that ends in divinity. Go on … without fear, for existence protects those who trust it.

Relax, surrender to existence, and allow joy to overwhelm you. Make it your wings so you can touch the stars. A heart full of joy is very close to the stars. Only the sad, the worried and the unhappy go to hell, they create their own hell. The people who are happy, who sing, who dance and celebrate, create their own paradise with every song, with every dance. It is up to you whether you create a paradise for yourself or whether you fall into the darkness, into the fire of hell. They are not outside of you, they are both inside you.

It all depends on what you choose for yourself. Choose to be divine, choose to celebrate more and more, choose to feel festive, then more and more flowers can bloom in your being and an ever stronger fragrance opens up for you. And that won’t just help you, it will help everyone you come in contact with. Joy is as contagious as illness.

When you see a few people dancing, you suddenly feel that your feet are ready too. You may be keeping it under control because you have been taught to control, but your body wants to dance with you. Whenever you have the chance to laugh, laugh; whenever you have the chance to dance, dance; whenever you have the opportunity to sing, sing – and one day you will find that you have created your own paradise. It’s not like you go into paradise, paradise isn’t somewhere in heaven – it’s something you create around you.

This is a good place to start. Go deeper with all my blessings, despite all fear. Never listen to the negative things because if you listen to them they can poison you, they can destroy your joy – keep your joy pure and unspoiled. And here are people who celebrate with you, who dance with you because you took the first step towards existence. And I want to remind you that the first step is almost half the journey.

Osho, The Razor’s Edge, Talk # 7