What are the three general points? The first is: regularity of meditativeness. Remember, it is very difficult to create meditation, it is very easy to lose it. Anything higher takes much arduous effort to create, but it can disappear within a moment. To lose contact with it is very easy.

That is one of the qualities of the higher. It is like growing a rose flower: just a little hard wind and the rose has withered and the petals have fallen, or some animal has entered the garden and the rose is eaten. And whenever there is a conflict between the higher and the lower, always remember, the lower wins easily. If you clash a rose flower with a rock, the rose flower is going to die, not the rock.
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Your whole past is full of rocks, and when you start growing a rose of awareness in you, there are a thousand and one possibilities of it being destroyed by your old rocks - habits, mechanical habits. You will have to be very watchful and careful. You will have to walk like a woman who is pregnant... It has to be as regular as sleep, as food, as exercise, as breathing.

The second general point is: don't waste your time with the non-essential. Don't fool around... The man who wants to be a Buddha has to drop the non-essential more and more, so that more energy is available for the essential. Take a look at your life, how many non-essential things you are doing - and for what? And how long have you done them, and what have you gained? Are you going to repeat the same stupid pattern the whole of your life? Enough is enough!.. All that is great comes only when you have extra energy. If your whole life is wasted on the mundane, then the sacred will never be contacted.

And the third general point is: Don't rationalize your errors and mistakes. The mind tends to rationalize. If you commit some mistake, the mind says "It had to be so, there were reasons for it. I am not responsible, the very situation made this happen." And the mind is very clever at rationalizing everything.

Avoid rationalizing your own errors and mistakes, because if you rationalize you protect them. Then they will be repeated... Reasoning is one thing, rationalization is totally another... And you will be able to find that when you are rationalizing, you can deceive others but you cannot deceive yourself. You KNOW that you have fallen: rather than wasting time in rationalizing and convincing yourself that nothing is wrong, put the whole energy into being aware.

From The Book of Wisdom, by Osho
Used by kind permission of Osho Foundation International