negativity meditation

Osho Meditation for Negativity

[A sannyasin says: Quite often I feel very negative, without energy, just dead. It comes and goes, but the energy I do have, goes to my head.]

Osho - Mm mm, everything is going well. There is some mechanism of which I am aware.... For these six months that you are away, I would like to give you a small method. Negativity is very very natural. It should not be so, but it is, because every child passes through many negative moments.

First, in the mother’s womb, the child remains in deep negativity. He has to depend continuously on the mother, on her moods. He has no way of showing his own will. If the mother is ill, he is ill. If the mother is sad, he is sad. If the mother is feeling nauseous, he is feeling nauseous. So he has to follow like a shadow. That gives him one of the most basic negative feelings about life – that he is impotent; that he has no energy, no power.

Then he comes out of the womb. The passage from the womb to the world is very difficult. He passes through something almost like death; a great struggle, trauma. It is as if he is being uprooted. He is uprooted. He has lived in the womb, is accustomed to it, and now he is uprooted; completely out of it. He is just like a small plant being taken out of the ground. He feels shaken.

Then comes the hazardous life. Now he has to live on his own. And every moment he learns more and more of negativity. He is feeling hungry – he has to cry and weep. Continuously there is the feeling of being dependent, a slave. And this goes on and on and on. Then as he is brought up, everybody is telling him what to do, what not to do – as if he is nobody. He is a small, tiny weakling in the world of giants, and everybody is trying to manipulate him. Deep inside he goes on saying ’No, No, No!’ On the outside he has to say ’Yes, yes, yes’. He becomes a hypocrite.

So try this method each night for sixty minutes. For forty minutes, just become negative – as negative as you can. Close the doors, put pillows around the room. Unhook the phone, and tell everybody that you are not to be disturbed for one hour. Put a notice on the door saying that for one hour you should be left totally alone. Make things as dim as possible. Put on some gloomy music, and feel dead. Sit there and feel negative. Repeat ’No’ as a mantra (laughter).

Imagine scenes of the past – when you were very very dull and dead, and you wanted to commit suicide, and there was no zest to life – and exaggerate them. Create the whole situation around you. Your mind will distract you. It will say, ’What are you doing? The night is so beautiful, and the moon is full!’ Don’t listen to the mind. Tell it that it can come later on, but that this time you are devoting completely to negativity. Be religiously negative, mm? Cry, weep, shout, scream, swear – whatsoever you feel like, but remember one thing – don’t become happy (laughter). 

Don’t allow any happiness. If you catch yourself, immediately give yourself a slap! Bring yourself back to negativity, and start beating the pillows, fighting with them, jumping. Be nasty! And you will find it very very difficult to be negative for these forty minutes. This is one of the basic laws of the mind – that whatsoever you do consciously, you cannot do. But do it – and when you do it consciously, you will feel a separation. You are doing it but still you are a witness; you are not lost in it. A distance arises, and that distance is tremendously beautiful. But I am not saying to create that distance. That is a by-product – you need not worry about it. After forty minutes suddenly jump out of the negativity.

Throw the pillows away, put on the lights, put on some beautiful music, and have a dance for twenty minutes. Just say ’Yes! yes! yes!’ – let it be your mantra. And then take a good shower. It will uproot all the negativity, and it will give you a new glimpse of saying yes. And to come to saying yes is what religion is all about. We have been trained to say no – that’s how the whole society has become ugly.

So this will cleanse you completely. You have energy, but all around the energy you have negative rocks, and they don’t allow it out. Once these rocks are removed you will have a beautiful flow. It is just there, ready to come out, but first you have to go into negativity. Without going deep into the no, nobody can attain to a peak of yes. You have to become a no-sayer, then yea-saying comes out of that.

[Some time ago in a lecture Osho was asked why it was that the closer one got to him, the further away he seemed to recede. He replied that this is how it is – that when one comes close to the master, one is approaching a fire, a death, so naturally one will feel this... ]

I am there and yet I am not there. If you are far away from me, I am there. If you come close, I am not there. Deep within me you will not find anybody there – just a nobodiness, a nothingness, a deep emptiness.

Source: " Be Realistic: Plan for a Miracle, Chapter 7 " - Osho