I BELIEVED I WAS UNCREATIVE. WHAT ELSE CAN BE CREATIVITY BESIDES DANCING AND PAINTING AND HOW TO FIND OUT WHAT MY CREATIVITY IS?
CREATIVITY has nothing to do with any activity in particular — with painting, poetry, dancing, singing. It has nothing to do with anything in particular.
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.
So the first thing to be remembered: don’t confine creativity to anything in particular. A man is creative — and if he is creative, whatsoever he does, even if he walks, you can see in his walking there is creativity. Even if he sits silently and does nothing, even non-doing will be a creative act. Buddha sitting under the Bodhi Tree doing nothing is the greatest creator the world has ever known.
Once you understand it — that it is you, the person, who is creative or uncreative – then this problem disappears.
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.
You become more divine as you become more creative. All the religions of the world have said: God is the Creator. I don’t know whether He is the Creator or not, but one thing I know: the more creative you become, the godlier you become. When your creativity comes to a climax, when your whole life becomes creative, you live in God. So, He must be the Creator because people who have been creative have been closest to Him.
Love what you do. Be meditative while you are doing it — whatsoever it is! irrelevant of the fact of what it is.
If you clean the floor with such love, you have done an invisible painting. You lived that moment in such delight that it has given you some inner growth. You cannot be the same after a creative act.
Creativity means loving whatsoever you do — enjoying, celebrating it, as a gift of God!
Maybe nobody comes to know about it. Who is going to praise anyone for cleaning this floor? History will not take any account of it; newspapers will not publish her name and pictures — but that is irrelevant. The person enjoyed it. The value is intrinsic.
So if you are looking for fame and then you think you are creative — if you become famous like Picasso, then you are creative — then you will miss. Then you are, in fact, not creative at all: you are a politician, ambitious. If fame happens, good. If it doesn’t happen, good. It should not be the consideration. The consideration should be that you are enjoying whatsoever you are doing. It is your love-affair.
If your act is your love-affair, then it becomes creative. Small things become great by the touch of love and delight.
The questioner asks: “I believed I was uncreative.” If you believe in that way, you will become uncreative — because belief is not just belief. It opens doors; it closes doors. If you have a wrong belief, then that will hang around you as a closed door. If you believe that you are uncreative, you will become uncreative — because that belief will obstruct, continuously negate, all possibilities of flowing. It will not allow your energy to flow because you will continuously say: “I am uncreative.”
This has been taught to everybody. Very few people are accepted as creative: A few painters, a few poets — one in a million. This is foolish! Every human being is a born creator. Watch children and you will see: all children are creative. By and by, we destroy their creativity. By and by, we force wrong beliefs on them. By and by, we distract them. By and by, we make them more and more economical and political and ambitious.
When ambition enters, creativity disappears — because an ambitious man cannot be creative, because an ambitious man cannot love any activity for its own sake. While he is painting he is looking ahead; he is thinking, ‘When am I going to get a Nobel Prize?’ When he is writing a novel, he is looking ahead. He is always in the future — and a creative person is always in the present.
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. But that impossible thing has happened, that ugly phenomenon has happened, because all your creative sources have been plugged, blocked, destroyed, and your whole energy has been forced into some activity that the society thinks is going to pay.
Our whole attitude about life is money-oriented. And money is one of the most uncreative things one can become interested in. Our whole approach is power-oriented and power is destructive, not creative. A man who is after money will become destructive, because money has to be robbed, exploited; it has to be taken away from many people, only then can you have it. Power simply means you have to make many people impotent, you have to destroy them — only then will you be powerful, can you be powerful.
Be creative. Don’t be worried about what you are doing — one has to do many things — but do everything creatively, with devotion. Then your work becomes worship. Then whatsoever you do is a prayer. And whatsoever you do is an offering at the altar.
One great Zen master was a carpenter, and whenever he made tables, chairs, somehow they had some ineffable quality in them, a tremendous magnetism. He was asked, “How do you make them?”
He said, “I don’t make them. I simply go to the forest: the basic thing is to enquire of the forest, of trees, which tree is ready to become a chair.”
Now these things look absurd — because we don’t know, we don’t know the language. For three days he would remain in the forest. He would sit under one tree, under another tree, and he would talk to trees — and he was a mad man! But a tree is to be judged by its fruit, and this master has also to be judged by his creation. A few of his chairs still survive in China — they still carry a magnetism. You will just be simply attracted; you will not
know what is pulling you. After a thousand years! — something tremendously beautiful.
He said, “I go and I say that I am in search of a tree who wants to become a chair. I ask the trees if they are willing; not only willing: cooperating with me, ready to go with me — only then. Sometimes it happens that no tree is ready to become a chair — I come empty handed.”
It happened: The Emperor of China asked him to make him a stand for his books. And he went and after three days he said, “Wait — no tree is ready to come to the palace.”
After three months the Emperor again enquired. The carpenter said, “I have been going continuously. I am persuading. Wait — one tree seems to be leaning a little bit.” Then he persuaded one tree. He said, “The whole art is there! — when the tree comes of its own accord. Then she is simply asking the help of the carpenter.”
If you are loving, you will see that the whole existence has individuality. Don’t pull and push things. Watch, communicate; take their help — and much energy will be preserved. Even trees are creative, rocks are creative. You are man: the very culmination of this existence. You are at the top — you are conscious. Never think with wrong beliefs, and never be attached to wrong beliefs, that you are uncreative. Maybe your father said to you that you are uncreative, your colleagues said to you that you are uncreative. Maybe you were searching in wrong directions, in directions in which you are not creative, but there must be a direction in which you are creative. Seek and search and remain available, and go on groping — unless you find it.
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.
Osho: A Sudden Clash of Thunder Chapter #4 Chapter title: Man is Always an Opening Q 1 (excerpts)
समझ पाते नहीं हम भी इशारे
खुदा भी खुलके कुछ कहेता नहीं है। ……………….राजेश रेड्डी
Samajh paate nahin hum bhi ishare
Khuda bhi khulke kuchh kaheta nahin hai…………………..Rajesh Reddy.
I too fail to understand the signs,
And even God doesn’t openly say anything.
The ability to look at life without fixed beliefs, without the burden of “right” and “wrong,” and with a childlike curiosity that makes everything – trees, rocks, people, even the smallest moments come alive with individuality and purpose. To stop pushing and pulling against life, to stop believing we are uncreative or accidental, and instead to simply be open, available, and trusting of the flow. In that state of innocence and acceptance, life reveals that nothing is random, every person has a unique destiny, a message to deliver, and the Whole working silently through them.
The song from “Barfi” written by Neelesh Mishra, composed by Pritam and sung by Papon and Sunidhi Chauhan. The song’s playful simplicity becomes a reminder that meaning is not found by forcing life, but by feeling it, by living with curiosity, spontaneity, and love.
Kyon – Lyrical Video | Ranbir Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra | Barfi | Papon, Sunidhi