According to Osho, personal growth feels ugly because meditation loosens the socially painted mask and exposes the mind’s repressed distortions you once projected onto others. This unsettling, chaotic phase is a sign of progress: you’re seeing yourself rightly. If you continue, even the mind-mask drops, revealing your original being—pure, radiant, the only true beauty—after which ordinary life regains clarity.
Like washing a dirty face, at first the grime shows and seems worse, but keep scrubbing and your clean, beautiful face appears.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
The more I seem to grow, the more ugly I seem to become. Why is this?
There is a Zen saying, that when a seeker comes to a Master, rivers are rivers, mountains are mountains, but once in contact with the Master, soon rivers are no more rivers, mountains are no more mountains, everything is disturbed. But if he continues, and does not escape in the middle -- again a moment comes: mountains are mountains, rivers are rivers. This is the process. When you start meditating you have a false personality, a painted face, which you have made beautiful according to the social needs. It is false, but you are identified with it. Then you start meditating; that face starts becoming loose, sometimes it slips, you come to feel your real face -- you become afraid, it looks ugly. That's why you had painted it. That's why you were hiding it under a mask. But meditation will drop all the masks. It is a search for…
Unconsciousness creates all kinds of ugliness in life; so whenever you find anything ugly in you, just look for the cause; somewhere in the roots will be unconsciousness. If there is ambition the person becomes ugly. Politicians are bound to be ugly, so much ambition, so much desire to dominate others, by any means -- because time is short and competition is great. There are so many people who are trying to be the president, to be the prime minister in such a great competitive world, with such a short life, how can one bother about the means and the end? Then any means have to be used to fulfil your desire. Then one forgets all sense, all reason, all aesthetic sensibility. If one has to murder people, one murders.
Beloved Osho, your inner beauty I can only feel as far as I have discovered myself. But for ten years, whenever I see you entering the auditorium, there is this surprise about your unbelievable outer beauty too. Osho, is the outer appearance always just a reflection of the inner?
Janak asked him, "I can understand why they are laughing -- because of your body; but I cannot understand why you are laughing. And you stopped all their laughing with your laughter." A single man stopped one thousand people's laughter. Ashtavakra said to Janak, "I thought this conference was for scholars and philosophers, but these are all shoemakers. They can understand only the skin. They cannot see the inner, they can only see the outer." There was a great silence. What he was saying had a great truth in it. Janak dissolved the conference and said, "Now I would like to inquire of Ashtavakra only. He has defeated you all just by his laughter and his statement that, `You can't see the inner, you can only see the outer; you are all shoemakers.' Shoemakers work with the skin of different animals. I dissolve the conference and, Yagnavalka, return those one…
Beloved Osho, each time I see you, I am shocked by your beauty. You've got to be the most gorgeous being that has ever happened! Osho, in what way do you experience your own beauty?
So he made the portrait. It took many sittings and the woman became more and more puzzled as she saw the portrait coming up. When the portrait was complete she said, "Only one question, I want to know where my nose is. Everything is okay, but at least I should know where my nose is. From there I can figure out the eyes, the mouth, my ears -- that can be the center for finding myself." Picasso said, "I told you in the very beginning...! Now it is a trouble to find the nose -- who knows where your nose is! I have painted it, that is true, but in so many sittings I can't remember exactly where I have put it. You take it home and contemplate; perhaps you may find it. It is there, that much is certain. It is there, this much I can guarantee because I…
(Then Osho wound up the evening by talking about the beauty meditation creates in and around the meditator.) Meditation does two things to you: one: it makes you aware of the beauty that exists all around, it makes you sensitive to it; and the second thing: it makes you beautiful, it gives you a certain grace. Your eyes become full of beauty because the whole existence is beautiful. We just have to drink out of it, we just have to allow the beauty to enter us. Through our eyes, through our ears, through all our senses; the beauty has to be allowed to enter us. It gives tremendous nourishment to the soul. Ordinarily a person is not aware of the beauty that surrounds existence. He is more aware of all that is ugly because the mind always goes on finding the negative. It counts the thorns, it misses the roses.