Osho - Weekly Meditation For The Here And Now
Weekly Meditation - Week 52. Fantasy
December 23
Fantasy
Fantasy can do one thing: It can either create hell or it can create heaven. Fantasy is very consistent; it cannot create the paradox.
Fantasy is very logical, and reality is very illogical. So whenever reality erupts, it will have both the polarities in it - that is one of the criteria of reality. If it has not both polarities together, then it is a mind construction.
The mind plays safe and always creates a consistent thing. Life itself is very inconsistent and contradictory - it has to be, it exists through contradiction. Life exists through death, so whenever you are really alive you will feel death too. Any moment of great life will also be a great moment of death. Any moment of great happiness will also be a great moment of sadness. This has to be so.
So let this be remembered always: Whenever you have a contradictory experience - two things that don't fit together, that are diametrically opposite to each other - they must be real; you could not have imagined them. Imagination is never so illogical.
December 24
Creativity
Creativity is a food, and people who are nor creative rarely grow — because they are starved.
We come close to God only when we create. If God is the creator, then to be creative is the way to participate in God's being. We cannot create this universe, but we can create a small painting - we can create small things. And it does not make any difference whether you create a big thing or a small thing. Creativity knows no difference.
So creativity is not concerned with quantity, it is concerned with quality. And it has nothing to do with what others say about your creations - that is irrelevant. If you enjoyed doing your work, that's enough; you have been already paid for it.
December 25
Understanding
Lovers can separate, but the understanding that has been gained in the company if the other will always remain as a gift - if you love a person, the only valuable gift that you can give to him or her is some quantity of understanding.
Talk to each other, and understand that sometimes your partner will need to be alone. And this is the problem: This need may not happen at the same time to both of you. Sometimes you want to be with her, and she wants to be alone - nothing can be done about it. Then you have to understand and leave her alone. Sometimes you want to be alone, but he wants to come to you - then tell him that you are helpless!
Just create more and more understanding. That's what lovers miss: They have enough love, but understanding, none, none at all. That's why on the rocks of misunderstanding their love dies. Love cannot live without understanding. Alone, love is very foolish; with understanding, love can live a long life, a great life - of many joys shared, of many beautiful moments shared, of great poetic experiences. But that happens only through understanding.
Love can give you a small honeymoon, but that's all. Only understanding can give you deep intimacy. And each honeymoon is followed by depression, anger, frustration. Unless you grow in understanding, no honeymoon is going to be of any help; it will be just like a drug. So try to create more understanding. And even some day if you separate, the understanding will be with you, that will be a gift of your love to each other.
December 26
The Mysteriolts
Listen to the mysterious; don't deny it. Don’t say offhandedly that it doesn't exist. All the people who have walked on the earth in a conscious way agree - that the mysterious exists.
The world is not finished at the visible. The invisible is there, and it is far more significant because it is far deeper. The visible is only a wave in the invisible. The invisible is the ocean. So when something strange happens, don't deny it and don't close yourself to it. Open up; let it come in. And there are many, many moments every day when the mysterious knocks at the door.
Suddenly a bird starts calling: Listen to it, and listen through the heart. Don't start analyzing it. Don't start talking inside about it. Become silent, 'let it penetrate you as deeply as possible. Don't hinder it by your thoughts. Allow it" an absolute passage. Feel it - don't think it.
You may feel different the whole day because you encountered a rose in the early morning. You may feel totally different the whole day if you have seen the sun rising in the morning and were overwhelmed by it. You will feel like an utterly new person if you have seen birds on the wing and you have been with them for a moment. Your life has started changing.
This is the way one becomes a seeker. One has to absorb the beauty of existence, the sheer joy of it, the overwhelming blessing of it.
December 27
Remain Adventurous
Always remain adventurous. Never forget for a single moment that life belongs to those who are explorers. It does not belong to the static; it belongs to the flowing. Never become a reservoir; always remain a river.
The mind cannot cope with the new. It cannot figure out what it is, it cannot categorize it, it cannot put labels on it; it is puzzled by the new. The mind loses all its efficiency when it confronts something new. With the past, with the old, with the familiar, the mind is very at ease, because it knows what it is, how to do, what to do, what not to do. It is perfect in the known; it is moving in well-traveled territory.
Even in darkness it can move; the familiarity helps the mind to be unafraid. But this is one of the problems to be understood: Because the mind is always unafraid only with the familiar, it does not allow you growth. Growth is with the new, and the mind is only unafraid of the old. So the mind clings to the old and avoids the new. The old seems to be synonymous with life, and the new seems to be synonymous with death; that is the mind's way of looking at things. You have to put the mind aside.
Life never remains static. Everything is changing: Today it is there, tomorrow it may not be. You may come across it again; who knows when? Maybe it will take months, years, or lives. So when an opportunity knocks at the door, go with it. Let this be a fundamental law: Always choose the new over the old.
December 28
Madhouse
Always remember one thing: that as you are, as everybody is, you are already mad. Humanity is mad; this earth is a madhouse. So you can only go sane, you cannot go mad .
If you are afraid of becoming sane, that is one thing, but don't be afraid of going mad, because what else can happen? The worst has happened already! We are living in the worst kind of hell. So if you fall you may fall into heaven. You cannot fall anywhere else.
But people are afraid, because whatever they have been living, they think that is the normal thing. Nobody is normal. It is only very rarely that there is a normal man like Jesus or Buddha: All others are abnormal. But the abnormal are in the majority, so they call themselves normal; Jesus looks abnormal. And naturally the majority can decide; they have the votes to decide who is normal and who is not. It is a strange world: Here normal people appear abnormal, and the abnormal are thought to be normal.
Watch people, watch your own mind: It is a monkey, a mad monkey. For thirty minutes just write down whatever comes into your mind, and then show it to someone. Anybody will certify you as mad!
Don't be afraid. Go with the feeling that comes to you, go with that call, follow that hint. And if you disappear, disappear! What have you got to lose?
December 29
Challenge Of The Tild
This is just a beginning. You will have to pass through more and more strange lands. Truth is stranger than any fiction. But be courageous.
Before you start entering inside yourself, you don't know how much of yourself was never known to you. You were living with just a fragment of your being. You were living like a drop of water, and your being is like an ocean. You were identified with just the leaf of the tree, and the whole tree belongs to you.
Yes, it is very strange, because one starts expanding. New realities have to be absorbed. Each moment one has to come across facts that one has never come across, so each moment there is an unsettlement, and the chaos becomes continuous. You can never settle. You can never become certain, because who knows what is going to be opened to you in the next moment?
That's why people never go in. They live a settled life. They have cleared a small land of their being and made their house there. They have closed their eyes and have made big fences and walls, so they think, "This is all." And just beyond the wall is their real, wild being waiting for them.
December 30
Beginning
Wherever you are, it is always at the beginning. That's why life is so beautiful, so young, so fresh.
Once you start thinking that something is complete, you start becoming dead. Perfection is death, so perfectionistic people are suicidal. Wanting to be perfect is a roundabout way of committing suicide. Nothing is ever perfect. It cannot be, because life is eternal.
Nothing ever concludes; there is no conclusion in life - just higher and higher peaks. But once you reach one peak, another is challenging you, calling you, inviting you. So always remember that wherever you are is always a beginning. Then one always remains a child, one remains virgin. And that's the whole art of life-to remain a virgin, to remain fresh and young, uncorrupted by life, uncorrupted by the past, uncorrupted by the dust that ordinarily gathers on the roads on the journey. Remember, each moment opens a new door.
It is very illogical, because we always think that if there is a beginning, then there must be an end. But nothing can be done. Life is illogical. It has a beginning but no end. Nothing that is really alive ever ends. It goes on and on and on.