Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

by Sadhguru

The function of the guru, contrary to popular belief, is not to teach, indoctrinate, or convert. The guru is here to throw light on dimensions beyond your sensory perceptions and your psychological drama, dimensions that you are currently unable to perceive. The guru is here, fundamentally, to throw light on the very nature of your existence.

Right now your problem is that you suffer what happened ten years ago and you suffer what may happen the day after tomorrow. Both are not living truths. They are simply a play of your memory and imagination.

Self-transformation is not incremental self-improvement. Self-transformation is achieved not by morals or ethics or attitudinal or behavioral changes, but by experiencing the limitless nature of who we are. Self-transformation means nothing of the old remains. It is a dimensional shift in the way you perceive and experience life.

if you really want to know spirituality, don’t look for anything.

for. It is not the object of your search that is important; it is the faculty of looking. The ability to simply look without motive is missing in the world today. Everybody is a psychological creature, wanting to assign meaning to everything. Seeking is not about looking for something. It is about enhancing your perception, your very faculty of seeing.

Human nature is such that we always yearn to be something more than what we are right now.

When our survival is in question, it is a big issue in our lives. But the moment it is taken care of, it doesn’t seem to mean anything.

When pleasantness is within, it is termed peace, joy, happiness. When your surroundings become pleasant, it gets branded success.

When you are in a pleasant inner state, you are naturally pleasant to everyone and everything around you. No scripture or philosophy is needed to instruct you to be good to others. It is a natural outcome when you are feeling good within yourself. Inner pleasantness is a surefire insurance for the making of a peaceful society and a joyful world.

It is said that if you can remain blissful for twenty-four hours, your intellectual capabilities can be almost doubled.

The only thing that stands between you and your well-being is a simple fact: you have allowed your thoughts and emotions to take instruction from the outside rather than the inside.

Somehow we think that fixing outer conditions will make everything okay on the inside. But these past 150 years are proof that technology will only bring comfort and convenience to us, not well-being. We need to understand that unless we do the right things, the right things will not happen to us: this is true not just of the outside world, but also the inside.

bullshit may get you to the top, but it never lets you stay there!

So, you can bullshit yourself into all kinds of emotional states, you can somehow crank up some well-being for yourself, but the problem is, it doesn’t last. The weather could bring it down. The stock market could make it come crashing down. And even if it does not collapse, living in anticipation that it might is bad enough!

So, as long as your inner life is enslaved to external situations, it will remain a precarious condition. There is no other way for it to be.

The way out is a very simple change in direction. You just need to see that the source and basis of your experience is within you. Human experience may be stimulated or catalyzed by external situations, but the source is within. Pain or pleasure, joy or misery, agony or ecstasy, happens only inside you.

All human experience is one hundred percent self-created.

We can infer from this that happiness is just a certain kind of chemistry. Peace is another kind of chemistry. In fact, every kind of pleasantness that we experience—whether peace or joy or ecstasy—is a kind of chemistry. The yogic system has always known this.

If you are aware, you can activate your system in such a way that simply breathing is an enormous pleasure. All it takes is a willingness to pay a little attention to the inner mechanism.

This is the fundamental shift in understanding that has to happen. Do not look for a way out of misery. Do not look for a way out of suffering. There is only one way—and that is in.

Peace and joy are not things you attain at the end of life. They are the basis of your life.

Human life is longing for unlimited expansion, and that is the only thing that will settle you for good.

This is because only when you are blissful will you be in the highest state of receptivity, and truly willing to explore all aspects of life.

An inability to be joyful by your own nature can make the simplest issues in life seem like highly complex problems.

The reason the simple things—like being peaceful, joyful, loving—have become ultimate aspirations is that people are living without paying any attention to the life process.

Enlightenment is not an attainment or an achievement. It is a homecoming. Your senses give you the impression that you are experiencing the outside, but you have never experienced the outside. When you realize that all that you experience is within, that absolute homecoming is enlightenment.

To attain the ecstasy of borderless unity, which is our natural state, all you need to do is live by the guideline that all human experience is generated from within—either with the support of external stimuli or without. That is all.

If you still believe that someone “up there” is going to rescue you and solve all your problems, just remember that you are living on a round planet—and one that’s spinning. So, whenever you look up, you are obviously looking in the wrong direction!

Unlike biological evolution, which happens without our conscious participation, spiritual evolution can happen consciously. All it takes, Adiyogi told us, is willingness.

“The only way out is in.”

If you go outward, it is an endless journey. If you turn inward, it is just one moment. In that one moment, everything changes.

In that one moment, you are not in pursuit of joy anymore. Instead, your life becomes an expression of your joyfulness.

To be human means you can mold situations you are living in the way you want them.

Whatever we do not want to take responsibility for, whatever we cannot make sense of logically, we label “destiny.” It is a consoling word, but disempowering.

Your destiny is written by you unconsciously. If you have mastery over your physical body, fifteen to twenty percent of your life and destiny will be in your hands. If you have mastery over your mind, fifty to sixty percent of your life and destiny will be in your hands. If you have mastery over your life energies, a hundred percent of your life and destiny will be in your hands.

When pain, misery, or anger happen, it is time to look within you, not around you. To achieve well-being the only one who needs to be fixed is you. What you forget is that when you are sick, it is you who needs the medication. When you are hungry, it is you who needs the food. The only one that needs to be fixed is you, but just to understand this simple fact people take lifetimes!

Creating your own destiny does not mean you have to control every situation in the world. Creating your destiny is about steadily heading toward your well-being and your ultimate nature, no matter what the content of life is around you. It simply means making yourself in such a way that, whatever the events and situations around you, you don’t get crushed by them; you ride them.

If you learn how to live it, life is nothing short of a daily miracle.

Unless you do the right things, the right things will not happen to you. Principles and philosophies are only of social consequence. It is time to wake up to yourself as an existential being, a living being, rather than a psychological case. Then your destiny will be your own. One hundred percent your own. This is not an idle promise. It is a guarantee.

The quality of our lives is determined by our ability to respond to the varied complex situations that we encounter. If the ability to respond with intelligence, competence, and sensitivity is compromised by a compulsive or reactive approach, we are enslaved by the situation. It means we have allowed the nature of our life experience to be determined by our circumstances, not by us.

Being fully responsible is to be fully conscious.

Being alive is being conscious. Everybody is conscious to some degree, but when you touch the dimension beyond body and beyond mind, you have touched that which is the very source of consciousness. You realize then that the entire universe is conscious. You inhabit a living cosmos.

It is time to reclaim for ourselves the extraordinary transformative power of this single word: responsibility. Apply it to your life, and watch the magic unfold.

Responsibility simply means your ability to respond.

All it requires is for you to realize that you are responsible for all that you are and all that you are not, all that may happen to you and all that may not happen to you.

This is a reality. Your physical existence is possible only

because of your body’s seamless ability to respond to the entire universe.

Taking responsibility is not accepting blame instead of assigning it. It simply means consciously responding to the situation. Once you take responsibility, you will invariably start exploring ways to address the situation. You will look for solutions.

Responsibility is freedom.

When you are able to create yourself the way you want, you can create your life the way you want as well. Your outer life may not be a hundred percent in your control, but your inner life always will.