It is only through meditation that slowly slowly more consciousness is created within you, more light is created; more watchfulness, witnessing, happens. And that is the miracle of awareness: if you become aware of anger you become a master of anger. Then it is up to you whether to be angry or not. You are absolutely free to be this way or that way.
That’s what meditation is all about: creating an integrated consciousness so that you can watch everything undisturbed, unprejudiced, without any a priory conclusions, without being for or against from the very beginning just watching it silently without any interpretation, just looking at anger, at jealousy at possessiveness, at sexuality, everything that disturbs your peace — and there are hundreds of things. You have to use the same method — that of detached observation — and you have to go to the very root of everything unafraid. There is no need to be afraid and there is no need to be in a hurry; it needs patient observation.
You have accumulated anger, sex, violence, greed, everything! Now this accumulation is a madness within you. It is there, inside you. If you begin with any suppressive meditation — for example, with just sitting — you are suppressing all of this, you are not allowing it to be released. So I begin with a catharsis. First, let the suppression be thrown into the air; and when you can throw your anger into the air, you have become mature.
When you practice Dynamic Meditation for the first time this will be difficult, because we have suppressed the body so much that a suppressed pattern of life has become natural to us. It is not natural! Look at a child: he plays with his body in quite a different way. If he is crying, he is crying intensely. The cry of a child is a beautiful thing to hear, but the cry of an adult is ugly. Even in anger a child is beautiful; he has a total intensity. But when an adult is angry he is ugly; he is not total. And any type of intensity is beautiful.
If you are angry you will share anger, if you are greedy you will share greed, if you are full of lust you will share your lust. We can share only that which we have, we cannot share that which we don’t have. This has to be the fundamental thing to be remembered; hence the first step is meditation and the second step is compassion.
Meditation is the alchemy of transforming. The unconscious into the conscious. It gives you a tremendous power, Far greater than anger, greed and lust.
Meditation is nothing but an effort to drop all the foreign elements so that you can see yourself as you were before you were born, mirrored in its purity. It is a great silence and a great joy to be there, and once you start abiding there, there is no death and no time. All fear, all greed, all anger, disappears: one is just there with no idea, no desire.
Meditation is like the moon: it transforms the energy of lust into love, anger into compassion, greed into sharing, aggressiveness into receptivity, ego into humbleness.
When you feel angry, there is no need to be angry against someone; just be angry. Let it be a meditation. Close the room, sit by yourself, and let the anger come up as much as it can. If you feel like beating, beat a pillow.
Man lives in unconsciousness. He lives like a robot. The major part of his being is in darkness; just a little bit has come out of the darkness, just the tip of the iceberg — and that too is very fragile. At any moment it goes back again into darkness. Somebody insults you and you lose your consciousness. It is very fragile. You become unconscious, you start behaving in an unconscious way, and later on you yourself recognise it. You wonder ‘How did I do all this?’ You start saying ‘It happened in spite of me. I never wanted to do it.’ People have done things in anger which only insane people can do — and they were not insane, they were as sane as anybody else, but in anger they lose consciousness, in passion they lose consciousness. There are a thousand and one situations every day when we lose consciousness, so that small portion of consciousness is not very effective either. If one is alert about using it rightly the only purpose is to meditate with that small piece of consciousness that you have not, because through meditation more and more of the unconscious starts becoming conscious, more and more of your hidden darkness starts disappearing. Right now ninety per cent is unconscious, ten per cent is conscious. As you meditate, slowly, fifteen per cont becomes conscious, twenty per cent becomes conscious. The moment there is at least fifty per cent of consciousness and fifty per cent of unconsciousness, then you can rely upon your consciousness because now there is a balance; the unconscious cannot easily take over.
Put your energies into creativity. Forget about anger as a problem, ignore it. Channelize your energy towards more creativity. Pour yourself into something that you love. Rather than making anger your problem, let creativity be your object of meditation. Shift from anger to creativity and immediately you will see a great change arising in you. And tomorrow the same things will not feel like excuses for being angry because now energy is moving, is channelized, is being sublimated, is enjoying itself, its dance. Who cares about small things?
The way to become aware “I am not the body, I am not the mind” is what meditation is all about. Watch, watch your body walking, sitting, lying down, and you will be able to see that you are the watcher, not the body. Watch your mind in anger, in hatred, in love, in greed, in misery, in joy, and you will become aware one day that you are not these things that happen in the mind; you are the watcher. Slowly slowly the watcher becomes crystallized. That is the birth of the soul. That day you are really born, that day your real life begins. From that moment god is a reality for you, and the only reality.
In anger the mind is focused entirely on one point. That is why there is so much power in anger.
Whenever you are in anger, remember yourself. In that very remembering the focus changes, the gestalt changes. You become more and more centred. Anger remains there just on the periphery of your being, but you know now that it is separate from you. You are not angry, you are only a witness to it. Now it is up to you to choose to be angry or not to be angry. You are no more identified; hence the freedom to choose.
Today it may seem that your anger is very strong, how can meditation break it? But it breaks — it has always broken. Rock is very strong and meditation is very delicate, but this is the mystery of life — the continuity of the delicate can break the strongest and the hardest.
If you want to observe anger in its entirety, you will have to observe it alone, in the privacy of your room. Then alone can you see it in its fullness, for then there are no limitations. This is why I advise the pillow meditation to certain people, so that they can observe their anger fully.
Osho Quotes on Anger – I
