Inner Approach – In Gita Verse 18.73 Arjuna said: My dear Kṛṣṇa, O infallible one, my illusion is now gone. I have regained my memory by Your mercy. I am now firm and free from doubt and am prepared to act according to Your instructions.
Arjuna understood that by surrendering the same war will become an opportunity for me and I can Fight Without Enmity. My approach plays an important part in my actions.
In our life we have been hurt many times – physical, mental and emotional. How this pain can be converted into creative growth depends upon us. It’s not only Arjuna who experienced the same war, same pain he transformed into divine work – we also can transform our pain into creative growth, spiritual growth.
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 more godly 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.
Do a small experiment: My suggestion is: when there is pain, go deeply into it, don’t avoid it. Let it be so, be open to it and become as sensitive as possible. Let the pain and its arrow penetrate you to your very core. Suffer it. And when the pleasure comes, let that too move you to your innermost core. Dance it. When there is pain be with pain, and when there is pleasure be with pleasure. Become so totally sensitive that each moment of pain and pleasure is a great adventure. And I would like to tell you one thing: if you can do this you will understand that pain too is beautiful. It is as beautiful as pleasure. It brings sharpness to your being and it also brings awareness to your being – sometimes even more than pleasure.
Pleasure dulls. That’s why people who live just in indulgence will be found to be shallow, you will not see any depth in them. They have not known pain at all; they have lived only on the surface, moving from one pleasure to another. The playboys – they don’t know what pain is.
Pain makes you very alert, pain makes you very compassionate and pain makes you sensitive to others’ pains too. Pain makes you immense, huge, big. The heart grows because of pain. It is beautiful, it has its own beauty. I am not saying seek pain; I am only saying whenever it is there, enjoy that too. It is a gift of existence and there must be a hidden treasure in it. Enjoy that too, don’t reject it. Accept it, welcome it and be with it. In the beginning it will be difficult, arduous. But by and by you will learn the taste of it.
The taste has to be learned – it is just like other tastes. When you start anything new you have to learn the taste. And of course the taste of pain is bitter. But once you have learned it, it gives such sharpness and brilliance to you. It shakes all dust, all stupor and sleepiness away from you. It makes you more fully mindful than anything else. In pain you can be more meditative than in pleasure.
Pleasure is more distracting. Pleasure engulfs you. In pleasure you abandon consciousness. Pleasure tends to make you unconscious; pleasure is a sort of oblivion, a forgetfulness. Pain is a remembrance: you cannot forget pain.
Have you not observed? – Whenever you are in pain you remember God, never when you are happy and in pleasure. Who bothers? In fact when you are in pleasure you forget yourself, you forget God, you forget everything: things are going so well. But in pain you remember God.
Pain can become a very creative energy. It can become a remembrance of the divine. Pain can become prayer, it can become meditation and it can become awareness.
When pain is there, use it as awareness, as meditation, as a sharpening of the soul. And when pleasure is there then use it as a drowning, as forgetfulness. Both are ways to reach the divine. One is to remember yourself totally and one is to forget yourself totally. Both pain and pleasure can be used but to use them you have to be very, very intelligent.
What I am suggesting is not the stupid person’s way; what I am suggesting is the intelligent, the wise man’s way. Whatsoever existence gives you, try to find a way to use it in such a way that it becomes a creative growth situation for you.
Tags: Inner Approach
