Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy
Highlights
“Human life is longing for unlimited expansion, and that is the only thing that will settle you for good.”
“Whenever we have had to do something about our lives, we have taken it into our hands. Whenever it comes to other people’s misfortunes, we have a word to explain it: destiny.”
“You have acquired certain tendencies over the years, depending on the impressions you have accumulated. These can be transformed entirely.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Existence is not judgmental. It treats all of us the same way.”
“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.”
“Your physical existence is possible only because of your body’s seamless ability to respond to the entire universe. If your body wasn’t responding, you wouldn’t be able to exist for a moment. Do you see that?”
“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.”
“On the other hand, the first reaction—anger—usually provokes unintelligent action. Anger is fundamentally self-defeating. If you look at your life closely, you will find that you have done the most idiotic and life-negative things when you were angry. Above all, you were working against yourself. If you work against yourself, if you sabotage your own well-being, you are obviously choosing unintelligence as a way of life.”
“The point is that anger is rooted in your false perception that you can change the situation by losing your temper with it.”
“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.”
“The choice is always before you: to respond consciously to the present; or to react compulsively to it. There is a vast difference between the two. And it can make the world of a difference.”
“That was when she made a life-changing decision: “It doesn’t matter who I meet, I will never speak to them in a manner that I regret later, because this meeting could be my last.””
“You come into this world with nothing and you go empty-handed. The wealth of life lies only in how you have allowed its experiences to enrich you.”
“Resentment, anger, jealousy, pain, hurt, and depression are poisons that you drink but expect someone else to die. Life does not work that way. Most people take lifetimes to understand this simple truth.”
“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.”
“Blissfulness means life is happening in an exuberant manner, and that is that all life seeks.”
“You can either react to life with “yes” and “no,” which will mean a perpetual division of this existence, which is the basis of repetitive cycles of conflict and misery. Or you can become one big YES to life.”
“Most people are not aware of the nature of their longing. When their longing finds unconscious expression, we call this greed, conquest, ambition. When their longing finds conscious expression, we call this yoga.”
“The science of yoga is, quite simply, the science of being in perfect alignment, in absolute harmony, in complete sync with existence.”
“When your energy body is in full vibrancy and proper balance, chronic diseases cannot exist in the body.”
“One of the biggest problems in the world today is that right from a person’s childhood, an inflexible system of morality has been imposed on the mind.”
“The moment you believe something, you bring a certain rigidity into the very life process that you are.”
“Human society reflects the inner experience of human beings.”
“Gradually, your energies and body get organized in the same direction as well.”
“Eventually, once your thoughts, emotions, body, and energy are channeled in one direction, your ability to create and manifest what you want is incredible.”
“Your mind may be thinking of money or a new house, your body may be longing for food or sleep, but your life energies are always longing to break the boundaries set by your physical and mental structures.”
“Once your software is fixed, it looks as if there is only one path you can walk in your life. It looks as if your destiny is predetermined. A spiritual process, however, means we have made up our minds to rewrite our software, consciously”
“This is all the spiritual process aims to do: loosen the grip of karma upon you. Whatever be the nature of your past karma, there is enough awareness in a human being to take complete charge of the karma of the present moment.”
“When you realize that all your material achievements are of value only in comparison with those who don’t have them, this is joy that springs from another’s deprivation. Can you really call this joy? Isn’t it actually a kind of sickness? It is time everyone addressed this. If you were alone on this planet, what would you want for yourself? Ask yourself this question and see where it takes you. Try this. Sit alone for five minutes and see what your life would be like if you were absolutely alone in this world. If there were nobody or nothing to compare yourself with, what would you truly long for? What would really matter to you if there were no external appreciation or critique? If you do this every day, you will become aligned with the longings of the life that you are, rather than the accumulated karmic mess that you believe you are.”
“If your actions find outward expression, involving body, mind, and the physical dimensions of energy, that is karma. But if you turn inward and perform an action beyond all dimensions of physicality, that is kriya. Karma is the process of binding you. Kriya is the process of liberating you. The most significant aspect of yoga is always to perform action beyond the physical dimensions of energy.”