Awareness in Action

The moment you start seeing your faults, they start dropping like dry leaves.

Then nothing else has to be done. To see them is enough. Just to be aware of your
faults is all that is needed. In that awareness they start disappearing, they evaporate.

One can go on committing a certain error only if one remains unconscious of it.
Unconsciousness is a must to go on committing the same errors, and even if you try to
change, you will commit the same error in some other form, in some other shape.
They come in all sizes and all shapes! You will exchange, you will substitute, but you
cannot drop it because deep down you don't see that it is a fault. Others may be telling
you because they can see...

That's why everybody thinks himself so beautiful, so intelligent, so virtuous, so saintly  -  
and nobody agrees with him! The reason is simple: you look at others, you see their
reality, and about yourself you carry fictions, beautiful fictions. All that you know about
yourself is more or less a myth; it has nothing to do with reality.

The moment one sees one's faults, a radical change sets in. Hence all the buddhas
down the ages have been teaching only one thing  -  awareness. They don't teach you
character  -  character is taught by priests, politicians, but not by the buddhas.
Buddhas teach you 'consciousness'  not  'conscience.'

Conscience is a trick played upon you by others  -  others are telling you what is
right and what is wrong. They are forcing their ideas upon you, and they go on
forcing them from your very childhood. When you were so innocent, so vulnerable,
so delicate that there was a possibility of making an impression on you, an imprint
on you, they have conditioned you  -  from the very beginning. That conditioning
is called conscience, and that conscience goes on dominating your whole life.
Conscience is a strategy of society to enslave you.

The buddhas teach consciousness. Consciousness means you are not to learn
from others what is right and what is wrong. There is no need to learn from anybody,
you have simply to go in. Just the inward journey is enough  -  the deeper you go,
the more consciousness is released. When you reach the center, you are so full of
light that darkness disappears.

When you bring light into your room, you don't have to push the darkness out.
The presence of the light is enough because darkness is only an absence of light.

Exerpt from OSHO's book, AWARENESS