The more we relax into ourselves; we bring out creativity and happiness. See, creativity is already present in every point in consciousness and it can be evoked. If there is no creativity, then you cannot bring it from somewhere. It is like applying the heat to pop the corn and it becomes popcorn. Similarly, there is inherent creativity in consciousness.
Meditation makes you feel free from within, makes you like a child, helps drop all the inhibitions, stiffness, concepts in the mind and shed all the barriers that you put on when communicating with others.
If the mind vacillates between the past and the future, then it's not sharp enough in the present. For creativity all that is required is sharpness of the mind, ability to perceive better. Perception, observation and expression -these three aspects which are integral to any exercise can blossom when our mind has a good rest.
Creativity and skillfulness are products of meditation. The practice of meditation makes you skillful in all your actions, enables you to be happy and maintain an undying smile, come what may.
The mind is a field which goes beyond our bodies. Our consciousness is a field, our mind is a field, we are all a field. Every point in the field is knowledge and it is vast. So our consciousness is filled with knowledge, filled with creativity.
Anyone who has discovered anything or any creativity has sprung up in any mind is because it is already present in the field. We take credit because we are tapping what is already there. Sometimes we can do it without any effort; it has already come out of us. If you ask a poet how he or she came up with such a beautiful poem, the poet says, "I don't know!" Whether it is a scientific discovery or an art, the mystery is from, ‘Where has it come from?’The source is unknown. Tapping this field within us, being with this unknown field is meditation.
Meditation cannot happen with effort, but with effortlessness. The mind and body have got opposite laws. On the physical level, more the effort, better the result. Whereas on the mental level or the level or creativity, lesser the effort, greater the result. When the mind learns to let go and relax, then the ideas come out. If you have forgotten something, the more effort you put to remember that, the longer it takes for you to remember. The sooner you let go, suddenly the ideas come. So the mind has an opposite law, to that of the body. And meditation is based on that law combined (that of the mind and body), when you are totally effortless.
By Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: first published in Rishimukh
Graphics by Niladri Dutta
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