Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy

by Sadhguru

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.

When mind and body exist only to serve the life within you, why is your life currently enslaved to the mind and body? Isn’t this a complete distortion of the way life should function?

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.

“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.”

By focusing at a point six to nine inches away from the region between your eyebrows for twelve to forty-eight minutes, with your eyes open, you can realize the nature and structure of your individual chakras (depending on the duration and your level of focus). This perception can help in stabilizing the random movement of chakras in the human physiology due to stressful external situations. This is just one aspect of a very sophisticated form of kriya yoga that allows you access to your inner akashic, or etheric, dimension.

you learn how to use the five elements in a certain simple geometric formation, you can create a highly beneficial energy space for yourself. Here’s a simple exercise you can try. Draw a figure like the one below with rice flour or some kind of grain. Place a small ghee, or clarified butter, lamp in a plate full of water at the center. Place a flower in the water. You have now created a geometric form, using water, fire, and air. The flower in the water represents the earth. Akash, or ether, is, of course, always present. Try this simple process every evening. You will find the energy of your room altered in a subtle but powerful way. In this manner, you can uniquely empower your home or office on a daily basis.