According to Osho, your unrest comes from identifying with the extrovert 'doer' and repressing its introvert opposite. Meditation is not introversion; it is witnessing both without choosing. Become the watcher—neither doing nor deliberately not-doing. Then the egoic doer naturally subsides, action flows without tension, and silence no longer threatens you. Beyond mind, you can use action and rest as tools, relaxing equally in both.
Don’t fight your busy side or hide in quiet; just watch both, and then doing feels easy and resting feels safe.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, I feel in my element when extroverted and in action. When I am quiet, and this busy bumble bee doesn't feel she has to be buzzing, it is very uncomfortable. Is the "doer" in me dying? Will it ever be able to relax in action and silence?
In all the old Indian scriptures, the sages come to a point.... The story is told about many saints and many sages -- and it is not just a story, it is a very significant psychological fact: when a saint comes to the peak of his consciousness, Indian mythology says that the throne of the god Indra, in heaven, starts quivering. He becomes afraid -- because if this man succeeds in attaining the highest consciousness, he will become Indra, and Indra will become an ordinary god. So his strategy is to send beautiful women from heaven to distract the sage, and once he is distracted, he is destroyed. He loses his consciousness; desires start arising, lust overwhelms him -- sensuality, sexuality, all raise their heads. There is no Indra, and there is nobody who is sending things to distract you -- it is your own mind. When the introverted mind…
Beloved Osho, I am such a doer. How can I become more open and available to you without doing? How to find the balance between doing and non-doing, to reconcile your two statements: "you have to act without will," and, "effort is also needed"?
You will be surprised to know that when I entered the university, I was doing so much exercise -- running, swimming, jogging and other exercises -- that a few other students became interested. They started following me, to go for a run. I had never thought that there was any problem in it, but the man who owned all the restaurants and the mess at the university came to see me and said, "I will give you a totally free pass as far as food is concerned, but please don't help these people to run and jog and swim, because I am going to be bankrupt! "Before you came I had never seen people eating thirty-five chappattis at a time -- and your followers are doing that. At the most four chappattis are enough. But if everybody starts eating thirty-five chappattis at a time, seventy chappattis in a day, then…
Meditation is always passive; the very essence of it is passive. It cannot be active because the very nature of it is non-doing. If you are doing something, your very doing disturbs the whole thing; your very doing, your very "activeness," creates the disturbance. Non-doing is meditation, but when I say non-doing is meditation I do not mean that you need not do anything. Even to achieve this non-doing, one has to do much. But this doing is not meditation. It is only a stepping stone, only a jumping board. All "doing" is just a jumping board, not meditation. You are just on the door, on the steps.... The door is non-doing, but to reach the non-doing state of mind one has to do much. But one should not confuse this doing with meditation. Life energy works in contradictions. Life exists as a dialectic: it is not a simple movement.
Question: OSHO, EXACTLY HOW DO YOU NOT DO IT? So there are only two types of non-doers in the world: one who by sheer understanding relaxes and finds the state of non-doing, of peace, of silence; and the other type, who will go thousands of miles, torture themselves in every possible way, do yoga exercises, stand on their head and fast, starve, renounce, repress, pray, go into the monasteries and do all kinds of stupid things. And finally, simply by being tired, exhausted, they sit down -- and suddenly it is there. Perhaps they may think it has come because of all their doing. That is not the case -- it has come in spite of all their doing. Otherwise, they are such practiced doers that it was possible they might have continued still, because the more you run, the better your running becomes.
THE HUMAN MIND IS EFFORT-ORIENTED, action-oriented, obsessed with activity -- because the more active you are, the more your ego can be fulfilled, the more you can say 'I'. All activity is basically food for your egoistic personality. Meditation is not an effort, it is not an activity. Rather, it is a deep surrender. It is to be in nonactivity. Basically, just to be is meditation -- not doing anything, not desiring anything, not hankering to go somewhere; just being here and now, simply being here and now. That's what I call meditation. But it is very difficult to conceive. Even to contemplate it is difficult. The mind cannot conceive of anything that is not an effort. The very language of the mind, the very framework, the very structure, is based on effort: to do something, to achieve something, to go somewhere.