regenerate

Some excerpts from a most excellent article by Osho that I read recently (which you can read in full here):

“Anything can be creative — you bring that quality to the activity. Activity itself is neither creative nor uncreative. You can paint in an uncreative way. You can sing in an uncreative way. You can clean the floor in a creative way. You can cook in a creative way.

Creativity is the quality that you bring to the activity you are doing. It is an attitude, an inner approach — how you look at things.”

“Not everybody can be a painter — and there is no need also. If everybody is a painter the world will be very ugly; it will be difficult to live. And not everybody can be a dancer, and there is no need. But everybody can be creative.

Whatsoever you do, if you do it joyfully, if you do it lovingly, if your act of doing it is not purely economical, then it is creative. If you have something growing out of it within you, if it gives you growth, it is spiritual, it is creative, it is divine.”

“We destroy creativity. Nobody is born uncreative, but we make ninety-nine percent of people uncreative.

But just throwing the responsibility on the society is not going to help — you have to take your life in your own hands. You have to drop wrong conditionings. You have to drop wrong, hypnotic auto-suggestions that have been given to you in your childhood. Drop them! Purify yourself of all conditionings… and suddenly you will see you are creative. To be and to be creative are synonymous. It is impossible to be and not to be creative.”

“People have a very limited idea of what being creative is — playing the guitar or the flute or writing poetry — so people go on writing rubbish in the name of poetry. You have to find out what you can do and what you cannot do. Everybody cannot do everything! You have to search and find your destiny. You have to grope in the dark, I know. It is not very clear-cut what your destiny is — but that’s how life is. And it is good that one has to search for it — in the very search, something grows.”

“If God were to give a chart of your life to you when you were entering into the world — this will be your life: you are going to become a guitarist — then your life would be mechanical. Only a machine can be predicted, not a man. Man is unpredictable. Man is always an opening… a potentiality for a thousand and one things. Many doors open and many alternatives are always present at each step — and you have to choose, you have to feel. But if you love your life you will be able to find.”

“Each man comes into this world with a specific destiny — he has something to fulfill, some message has to be delivered, some work has to be completed. You are not here accidentally — you are here meaningfully. There is a purpose behind you. The Whole intends to do something through you.”