According to Osho, creativity isn't in the task but in the quality of your consciousness. Any job - cleaning, cooking, talking - becomes creative when done as meditation: with total presence, love, and delight, free of egoic comparisons. Reframe the act ("this is painting"), and pour your heart into each small movement. Then creativity is continuous - how you sit, move, or even die - because love and awareness infuse everything.
Do any job like a loving meditation - be fully present and enjoy it - and it turns creative, even cleaning the floor.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
How to be creative while doing jobs which seem not to leave any space for creativity, like cleaning, etc.?
It is from Krishna Radha. She cleans. But I also do the same thing: every morning, every evening, twenty-four hours -- cleaning your mind, cleansing. But I never feel that there is any need for any other creativity. Cleaning a floor can be a tremendously creative act. Remember, creativity has nothing to do with any particular work. Creativity has something to do with the quality of your consciousness. Whatsoever you do can become creative. Whatsoever you do can become creative if you know what creativity means. Creativity means enjoying any work as meditation; doing any work with deep love. If you love me and you clean this auditorium, it is creative. If you don't love me then of course it is a chore, it is a duty to be done somehow, it is a burden. Then you would like some other time to be creative. What will you do in…
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…
What is creativity?
That's the paradox of creativity. If you see a painter painting, certainly he is active, utterly active, madly active -- he is all action. Or if you see a dander dancing, he is all action. But still, deep down there is no actor, no doer; there is only silence. Hence I called creativity the state of paradox. All beautiful states are paradoxical. The higher you go, the deeper you go into the paradox of reality. Supreme action with supreme relaxation: on the surface great action is happening, in the depth nothing is happening, or ONLY nothing is happening. Creative quietude is the supreme action -- the precious suppleness, simplicity, spontaneity and freedom that flows from us, or rather through us, when our private egos and conscious efforts yield to a power not their own. Yielding to a power not of your own, surrendering to a power that is beyond you,…
One day, after he had gone blind, rabbi bunam visited rabbi fishel. Rabbi fishel was famous throughout the land for his miracle cures. 'entrust yourself to my care,' said his host, 'I shall restore your light.' 'that is not necessary,' answered bunam 'I see what I need to see.'
When you come to a scientist, or a person who is absolutely absorbed with the objective dimension, he looks at you as if you are just the reflection in the mirror. He does not look at you, he looks around you. His approach is not direct, his approach is not intimate -- and you feel something is missing. He is mistreating you because he is not accepting your personality. He is treating you as if you are a thing. He is doing things but he is not touching you at all; you remain almost non-existential to him. And unless somebody touches you with love, looks at you with love, your own inwardness remains unfulfilled, unrecognised -- that is what the need to be needed is. The subjective is the dimension, the inward dimension, of poetry, song, dance, music, of art. It is better than the scientific dimension because it is…
You can create your problem; the problem is not there. There are many people who don't have any problem but they cannot trust this -- that they don't have any problem. This looks so unusual, in fact so abnormal -- not to have any problem. When everybody has problems, when everybody is going crazy and you don't have any problems, you cannot believe that you can be so abnormal, mm? You must be having some problems somewhere maybe hidden in the unconscious, in some deep nook and corner in the darkness of your soul, but you must have some problem! How is it possible that you don't have any problem? That's why you cannot accept it -- but you don't have! I can see through and through: you don't have any problem!