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There are many spurious and dangerously misleading teachings in vogue in our world today. “Be in the moment” is one of them.
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.
Does this mean then that in order to find peace you must annihilate your mind? Not at all. It simply means...
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“Do only one thing at a time” has become another popular self-help slogan.
Why would you do only one thing when the mind is a phenomenal multidimensional machine, capable of handling several levels of activity all at once?
The other phrase that has hardened into cliché through overuse is “positive thinking.” When it is oversimplified and used as some quick-fix mantra, positive thinking becomes a way of whitewashing or sugarcoating your reality. When you are unable to process real-time information and control your psychological drama, you seize on “positive thinking” as a tranquilizer.
the time-honored business of exporting human well-being to the heavens and claiming that the core of the universe is love.
All these puerile philosophies come from the assumption that existence is human-centric.
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.
Knowing this is yoga. One who embodies this is a yogi.
if you really want to know spirituality, don’t look for anything.
Seeking is not about looking for something. It is about enhancing your perception, your very faculty of seeing.
It wasn’t just wanderlust. The truth is I was restless. I wanted to know something. I didn’t know what and I didn’t know where I needed to go to get it. But in my innermost being, I knew I wanted more.
Human nature is such that we always yearn to be something more than what we are right now. No matter how much we achieve, we still want to be something more. If we just looked at this closely, we would realize that this longing is not for more; this longing is for all.
We are all seeking to become infinite. The only problem is that we are seeking it in installments.
Freedom—or mukti or moksha—is seen as the natural longing in every human being and our ultimate destination.
But somewhere along the way, life got complicated.
Very simply, well-being is just a deep sense of pleasantness within.
When pleasantness is within, it is termed peace, joy, happiness. When your surroundings become pleasant, it gets branded success.
there is substantial medical and scientific evidence today that your body and mind function at their best when you are in a pleasant state.
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 wellbeing is a simple fact: you have allowed your thoughts and emotions to take instruction from the outside rather than the inside.
What’s happening in your head is your dream. At least your dream should happen the way you want it, shouldn’t it? Even if the world doesn’t happen the way you want it, at least your thoughts and emotions should happen the way you want them to.
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.
long as your inner life is enslaved to external situations, it will remain a precarious condition.
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.
If your thought and your emotion are of your making, you can mold them any way you like.
every kind of pleasantness that we experience—whether peace or joy or ecstasy—is a kind of chemistry.
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.
When being peaceful, blissful, and joyous are not efforts anymore, you naturally start seeking, want to know the nature of life.
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 foundations of peace and bliss are not about attending to the external realities of your life, but in accessing and organizing the inner nature of your being.
Enlightenment is not an attainment or an achievement. It is a homecoming.
When you realize that all that you experience is within, that absolute homecoming is enlightenment.
Our physical and social worlds are governed by boundaries. Our inner world needs none.
all human experience is generated from within—either with the support of external stimuli or without.
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.
Nowhere in the cosmos is it marked “This side up”! The only distinction you do know right now is “within” and “without”
Unlike biological evolution, which happens without our conscious participation, spiritual evolution can happen consciously. All it takes, Adiyogi told us, is willingness.
This is Adiyogi’s most significant contribution to humankind and it is a profound and enduring one: “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.
Destiny has become a popular scapegoat, a way to deal with failure, a fatalistic ruse to reconcile ourselves to all kinds of uncomfortable situations.
Who you are is not the sum total of accumulations you have made.
Your mind is just an accumulation of impressions gathered through the five senses. What you accumulate can be yours, but it can never be you.
You are trying to live your life through what you have gathered, not through who you are.
Your destiny is written by you unconsciously.
To achieve well-being the only one who needs to be fixed is you.