It seems very hard to tell the person who is in misery that he must be responsible for his misery — because nobody else can be responsible for his misery. If the other is happy he must have chosen different values. He must have chosen values that give happiness, health, wholeness.
If you have chosen wrong values, you suffer, but you can always manipulate and interpret in such a way that your suffering seems as if it has been done to you, Nobody can make you suffer. It is always basically you who decide whether to suffer or not.
In every situation you can take a standpoint from which you can get out of suffering, and in every situation you can take a standpoint from which you can create as much suffering as you like. But people like to suffer. There is a reason for it: the more they suffer the more they are. In suffering the ego feels strengthened; in bliss it disappears.
So you go on saying that you need bliss, that you seek bliss, but when I look into you I find just the opposite. You seek misery, you live on misery, you look for misery. You go on saying that you seek bliss and you go on looking for misery. Unless this mechanism is understood perfectly well, you will never be able to know what God is. God is bliss. And bliss is possible only when you have understood the phenomenon of how you create your misery. Substitutes create misery.
For example, you wanted to love a woman but love is dangerous, unsocial, rebellious. And who knows what might happen? So you settled for marriage. Now marriage is a substitute for love. You will never be happy, you will be miserable.
Of course you will be comfortably miserable, conveniently miserable — but miserable all the same. You will have a certain security, a good bank balance, prestige, respect, but you will not be happy. Look at your respectable people. They have all that they always thought would help them, they have it. Money they have, power they have, prestige they have.
But look into their eyes — they are deserts. Not a single flower blooms, there is no joy. They are just dragging themselves somehow. They settled for a substitute.
Go and sit by the comer of a temple or a mosque and watch people coming and going. Do you see any celebration? Do you see any real joy? Do you see any dance? — nothing! People just walk into the temple as part of their formal duty, and get out as soon as they can. They have to fulfil a certain duty; they have to show society that they are religious people — it pays. But there is no joy. The temple is a substitute.
See people praying. Not a single tear comes to their eyes. See people praying. No radiance is on their faces. Not even a ripple of dance is around them. And they go on praying for their whole life. It is a sheer wastage of time and energy. They have chosen a substitute.
Beware of substitutes. Only then can you find God. God has no substitute. God is the really real, the truth.
OSHO
