[The sannyasin therapist says: But between groups it seems that I don’t seem to be able to find a comfortable space to be in. I don’t have the same relationship with myself that I have in the groups.]

Osho – It is very indicative and has to be understood. When you are working with people, you are so much involved in the work that you forget the sense of self. That happens to many reative people. They forget their work. A painter painting, a singer singing, a dancer dancing… here come moments when their whole energy suddenly is flowing into the work, has become a reative rush, and the self is no more there, because the self exists only when the energy is tagnant.

The stagnant energy becomes the self. When the energy is like a river, you have no self. So self is a sort of a block. Whenever there is no flow, energy is not going anywhere, suddenly the block is there; one feels confined. Then you will feel negative. You will feel a little restless because this self is like a rock on the chest. But this happens only to creative people. For uncreative people just the reverse is the rule.

If an uncreative person forces himself into any creativity, he becomes very self-conscious. He becomes very anxious, worried and tense, restless. When he is out of the work he is okay; he is at home. So the difference between a creative and a non-creative person has to be understood.
And it is good that one is a creative person. Your meditation, your growth is through creativity.

These groups are not just groups – these are your canvases on which you are painting. These are your poems that you are composing. When you see somebody flowering, somebody radiant, a poem is born and you feel fulfilled. You suddenly feel enhanced. You recognise, you realise your worth, mm? – this man has flowered, this woman is smiling so beautifully. Then you are happy. This is the happiness of a creative person.

A creative person is happy only when something beautiful is created. A creative person’s heaven is in creativity. If you throw Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci into heaven – the heaven of the uncreative people, who are just sitting there doing nothing – they will run out of it! They will say, ’What is this? This is hell!’ They may even like to go to hell if some creativity is possible – somewhere where their energies can stream, flow, can create new patterns of life; where something can be invented, discovered; where something can be added to existence as it is.

Maybe it is a very small thing, it doesn’t matter. A creative person feels good, fulfilled, arrived, when he can make this world a little more beautiful… just a small touch somewhere. So that simply shows your state of energy and your type. So whenever you are not creative, you will
feel a little restless, because the same energy that was moving into creativity will not find anywhere to move or anything to do. Your rest will become restless. In fact, when you will be tremendously deep in your work – howsoever hard – you will be resting. So rest is not always rest for everybody.

For a creative person, his creativity is his rest. Maybe sometimes he can change. He has been
painting for the whole week. For one day he simply writes poems, or just goes into the garden and starts working there. A change of activity is his rest. His rest is not no-activity. So if you really want to be rested, change the activity. Rush from one activity to another, and let your river tumble from one place into another. When you are alone write poems, paint, sing, play the guitar, dance – any crazy thing will do – but something; just don’t sit there. Sitting there won’t be of much help to you.

You will come out of it more tired than rested. Change of activity – that’s your rest – and losing yourself in creativity is your meditation. This is something very complicated. In the East meditation has existed for thousands of years, but it seems that only non-creative people became interested in it because it doesn’t give one any creative channel. So science never arose. Everything creative lagged behind. Only people who could sit silently and could lose themselves in non-activity moved into this meditative dimension.

And because of them the whole East became a little uncreative. In the West creative people have never tried meditation because they think it is not for them. Their instinct says to them ’This is not for you. You have to be creative. This will be an escape.’ So they become more and more tense, more and more worried.

Now it is possible that East and West can meet. The human consciousness has come to a point where vision is more clear, where we can look at the past as a total perspective. For the creative person, meditation has to become a part of his creativity, then only can it be meditative. And for a non-creative person, his silence is his only creativity; his inactivity is his only creativity. He creates himself in that inactivity. Both come to a realisation, but their paths are very different.

So simply go on working, and now work knowing more that this is your meditation. While working don’t simply think that you are helping the group, and that after the group you will rest and meditate for one week. That’s a wrong idea. While working, remember that this is your meditation. And you are not only working on the group and on other people; simultaneously, side by side, you are working on yourself. This is your way of working on yourself. This is just a technique for you to work on yourself.

Source: from Osho Book “The Passion for the Impossible”