Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

by Sadhguru

It took me time to see that people have assumed that stress is an inevitable part of their lives! They do not see that it is entirely self-created and self-inflicted.

Besides, there is substantial medical and scientific evidence to prove that in a state of anger, you are literally poisoning your system. This can be verified with something as simple as a blood test. When you are angry, your very chemistry is altered, and your system turns toxic. Intense activity and sleep are times when this chemical mess can undo itself. But if you are in frequent states of rage, you are heading toward physical and psychological disaster. There is no doubt about this.

But in rage, you become one with a group; out of rage, you become one with the universe.

What most people forget is that the past exists within each one of us only as memory. Memory has no objective existence. It is not existential; it is purely psychological. If you retain your ability to respond, your memory of the past will become an empowering process. But if you are in a compulsive cycle of reactivity, memory distorts your perception of the present, and your thoughts, emotions, and actions become disproportionate to the stimulus.

It is possible to transform the greatest adversity into a stepping-stone for personal growth.

The ability to respond gives you the freedom to act. It also gives you the freedom not to act. It puts you in the driver’s seat of your life. It empowers you to decide the nature and volume of action you want to

undertake. Responsibility is not compulsive action; it offers you the choice of action.

you make this ability to respond into a willing process, that marks the birth of a tremendous new possibility within you. Your inner genius begins to flower.

Your ability to respond is the way you are. Only your ability to act is connected with the outside world. Responsibility is not about talking, thinking, or doing. Responsibility is about being. That’s the way life is—not an independent, self-contained bubble but a moment-to-moment dialogue with the universe. You don’t have to work at making it that way. You just have to see it the way it is.

If you are willing, every moment of your life can be a fantastic experience.

The possibility of ultimate freedom may seem deeply threatening to many. Yes, it is a threat—but only to your limitations. Do you want to live a life of voluntary self-imprisonment? Limiting your responsibility is to suffocate yourself on various levels—physically, intellectually, and emotionally. Unfortunately, this stifling of life is understood by people as safety, as security.

If you are lonely, it is because you have chosen to become an island unto yourself.

What the mind forgets is that the ability to respond is the basis of life.

Being responsible is taking ownership of your life. It means you have taken the first radical step to becoming a complete human being—fully conscious and fully human. In taking responsibility and beginning the journey toward conscious living, you are putting an end to the age-old patterns of assigning blame outward or heavenward. You have begun the greatest adventure life has to offer: the voyage inward.

Love is not something you do; it is just the way you are.

Love has nothing to do with someone else. It is all about you. It is a way of being. It essentially means you have brought sweetness into your emotion. If a loved one travels to another country, would you still be able to love them? You would. If a loved one passed away, would you still be able to love them? You would. Even if a loved one is not physically with you anymore, you are still capable of being loving. So, what is love then? It is just your own quality. You are only using the other person as a key to open up what is already within you.

Once you experience this inner freedom, you will never experience insecurity in your life again. And anyway, when you are a truly blissful human being, everyone will naturally want to be around you! Blissfulness means life is happening in an exuberant manner, and that is that all life seeks.

“My ability to respond is limitless, but my ability to act is limited. I am one hundred percent responsible for everything I am and everything I am not,

for my capacities and my incapacities, for my joys and my miseries. I am the one who determines the nature of my experience in this life and beyond. I am the maker of my life.”

So, responsibility is not a teaching in civics. It is the simplest and easiest way for you to express your own divinity.

The whole effort of the spiritual process is to break the boundaries you have drawn for yourself and experience the immensity that you are. The aim is to unshackle yourself from the limited identity you have forged, as a result of your own ignorance, and live the way the Creator made you—utterly blissful and infinitely responsible.

This means everything is here and now.

The access for everything is here and now. And it lies only in one’s ability to respond—in one’s ability to experience and express the divine.

If you draw yourself a boundary, whether of ideology, caste, creed, race, or religion, you cannot move beyond it and you end up stuck for no reason at all. These boundaries only end up breeding fear, hatred, and anger. The bigger your boundary, the more burdensome it becomes. But if your responsibility is limitless, where’s the boundary? No boundary, no burden.

Conscious response brings you to a profound and enduring state of connectedness with life—not as an idea or an emotion, but life as life is. In this willing, active involvement with life, you are embraced by it and that embrace takes you to the very source of creation. That is all it takes to touch the Creator—just willingness, nothing else.

The science of yoga is, quite simply, the science of being in perfect alignment, in absolute harmony, in complete sync with existence.

There is so much talk of God and heaven mainly because human beings have not realized the immensity of being human. It is obvious that the very source of life is throbbing within you in some way. The source of your life is also the source of every other life and the source of all creation. This dimension of intelligence or consciousness exists in every one of us. The deliverance of every human being lies in finding access to this deathless dimension.

Yoga is not about being superhuman; it is about realizing that being human is super.

You are struggling with the walls of resistance that you have built around yourself.

You may have noticed this about yourself: when you are feeling pleasant, you want to expand; when you are fearful, you want to contract. Try this. Sit for a few minutes in front of a plant or tree. Remind yourself that you are inhaling what the tree is exhaling, and exhaling what the tree is inhaling. Even if you are not yet experientially aware of it, establish a psychological connection with the plant. You could repeat this several times a day. After a few days, you will start connecting with everything around you differently. You won’t limit yourself to a tree.

seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. If these sense organs fold up, you would know neither the world nor yourself.

If you are really interested in knowing life in all its depth and dimension, it is imperative that you look inward, not out.

This is why there is such a big disconnect between within and without. You can see what is outside you, but you cannot see what is inside you. Even if someone whispers, you can hear it, but there is so much activity happening in the body that is beyond your ability to hear. If even an ant crawls upon your skin you can sense it right away, but there is so much blood flowing within you that you cannot feel. Your sense organs can only register external sensations of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. But the source of all experience is within you.

Yoga is completely evenhanded: it employs all the aspects of who you are to take you to your ultimate destination.

Another way of listening to life is paying attention to it experientially, not intellectually or emotionally. Choose any one thing about yourself: your breath, your heartbeat, your pulse, your little finger. Just pay attention to it for eleven minutes at a time. Do this at least three times a day.

Your body is like a barometer. If you know how to read it, it can tell you everything about you and the world around you.

If you know how to read the body, it can tell you your potential, your limitations, even your past, present, and future. That is why the fundamental yoga starts with the physical body.

Sit in any comfortable posture, with your spine erect, and if necessary, supported. Remain still. Allow your attention to slowly grow still as well. Do this for five to seven minutes a day. You will notice that your breath will slow down.

“This very earth is my body. I take this body from the earth and give it back to the earth. I consciously ask Mother Earth now to sustain me, hold me, keep me well.”

Life is a game of just five ingredients.

earth, water, fire, air, and ether.

Those who have looked within themselves closely and attentively realized there was no need to look at the macro version.

It is a complex web, but there is one simple pin. And that is your identity.

The play of five elements is highly evolved and complicated, but the key to freedom is your limited persona. If you pull the plug, it just falls apart and you are free.

The air that you breathe, the food that you eat, the water that you drink, the land that you walk upon, and the very space that holds you—every one of them offers you a divine possibility.

Relief from something that you cannot hold within you is always the greatest pleasure, isn’t it? Whatever that thing may be!

So, the body can become an issue. A big issue. A barrier between you and your enjoyment of life.

The way you eat not only decides your physical health, but the very way you think, feel, and experience life.

Stress is not because of work—this is important to remember.

Stress is a certain level of internal friction.