Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy

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.

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

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.

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.

The spiritual process is not about imposing your ideas on existence; it is about making yourself in such a way that they creation and the Creator, and every atom in this existence, cannot help yielding to you. There is magic everywhere. If you learn how to live it, life is nothing short of a daily miracle.

One man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering. – Robert A Heinlein

The forms, the names, the ideas are varied. But essentially, when you say ‘God,’ you mean that which is responsible for everything in the universe. 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.

There is no ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ There is just ‘yes’ and ‘yes’! You can either react to life with repetitive cycles of conflict and misery. Or you can become one big YES to life.

There is more — much more — to life than you are aware of right now. Once you choose to become conscious of this simple fact — my ability to respond is limitless — suddenly you move into higher and higher levels of freedom within yourself. Life is now a wonderful and exhilarating journey of self-discovery.

In the inner life, there is only one kind of revolution and it is a silent one. It is about moving from unwillingness to willingness.

The question is: do you want to be a full-time human being or a part-time human being? To be an absolutely full-time human being is to be a constant full-blooded response to everything. You don’t have to do anything in particular. You just need to become a willing piece of life in this glorious living cosmos.

Responsibility is not burdensome. Boundaries are burdensome. No boundary, no burden. Once this happens, it is not that the cosmos beings to happen your way. Instead, what you are becomes cosmic.

This is not transcendence; this is homecoming.

This fruit, this egg, this bread, this vegetable — they are all a part of life themselves, but they are willing to become you. Would you be willing to do this for anyone?

First thing when you wake up, until the last moment before you fall asleep, remind yourself: My responsibility is limitless; if I am willing, I can respond to everything.

Sustain this awareness of your limitless nature for just one full minute, and you achieve a tremendous transformation. Every hour, remind yourself. Experiment with this awareness, allow it to deepen and see what happens.

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 to the very source of creation.

That is all it takes to touch the Creator — just willingness, nothing else.

Pantajali’s Yoga Sutras, one of the most profound documents on the yogic sciences, begins with a strange line: … And now, yoga.

A great document on life starts with just half a sentence! Why?

Every human being lives in a perpetual state of insufficiency. No matter who you are or what you have achieved, you still want a little more than what you have right now. This is human desire. But the fundamental desire within every human being is for boundless expansion.

Your fundamental area of work is only with the realities that you are aware of.

The first sheath or layer to which yoga draws our attention is the physical body — the annamayakosha, or more literally, the food body. It is just an accumulated heap of food. It is the product of all the nourishment you have ingested over the years.

The second layer is the manomayakosha, or the mental body. Today, doctors talk a great deal about psychosomatic ailments. This means that what happens in the mind affects what happens in the body. Every cell has its own intelligence, so there is an entire mental body, an entire anatomy of the mind.

The third layer of the self is the pranamayakosha, or the energy body. If you keep your energy body in perfect balance, there will be no disease in your physical or mental bodies. Everything about the human body can be changed. When your energy body is in full vibrancy and proper balance, disease cannot exist. These practices are not aimed at the disease. They are just aimed at bringing a certain harmony and vitality to the energy body.

These are the 3 dimensions of the self you are aware of right now: the physical, the mental, the energetic.

There is a fourth layer, the vignanamayakosha, or etheric body. Gnana means ‘knowledge.’ Vishesh gnana means ‘extraordinary knowledge’ that which is beyond sense perception. This is a transient state. If you find conscious access to this dimension, there is a quantum leap in your ability to know the cosmos.

The fifth sheath, the anandamayakosha, or bliss experience. It is beyond the physical entirely. We become blissful. When you touch this dimension of nonexistence, blissfulness is guaranteed. You are no more an issue in your own life. You explore the beyond.

Time and space is obliterated. An existence beyond existence.

You play with life whichever way you want.

How?

Yoga tells us there are a few fundamental ways. Karma yoga is the yoga of action with your physical body. Gnana yoga is the yoga of intelligence, employing your intelligence to reach your ultimate nature. Bhakti yoga the yoga of doctrine is how you employ your emotions to reach your ultimate nature.Kriya yoga is the yoga of transforming your energies to reach the supreme experience.

If your 1) karma (body), 2) gnana (mind), 3) bhakti (emotion), 4) kriya (energy) – integrate, you function. If not, you are one big mess.

Yoga is the science of bringing the four idiots together 🙂

The very source of life is throbbing within you. The source of your life is also the source of every other life and the source of all creation. 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.

The walls of self-preservation that you build for today are the wall of self-imprisonment for tomorrow.

Robert Frost: Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.

Ekadashi is the 11th day of the lunar segment that recurs every 14 days. It is traditionally regarded as the day to fast. If you force yourself to fast w/o preparing your body and mind sufficiently, you only cause damage to your health. But your body, mind, and energy are properly prepared, then fasting is of much benefit.

The entire aim and endeavor of yoga is to open up the cocoon of the physical body to the larger sensory body where you experience everything as a part of you. Fasting is an extension of this logic: a way of nourishing yourself w/o any active ingestion. Your ability to assimilate energy from water, air and sunlight is greater on certain days of the lunar cycle.

Give your food to the ants first, the most inconsequential organism you can think of, not to the gods, but the smallest. The planet belongs to them as much as to you. Every creature on the planet has the same right to live as you. This awareness helps create a conducive atmosphere for consciousness to grow.

Gautama the Buddha said: When you are badly in need of food, if you give away your food to somebody else, you will grow stronger.

Try skipping a meal. Not to torture yourself, just to become free from the torture chamber your body can become. Turn your compulsive pattern into a conscious process: this is the essence of fasting.

Just experiment. Start with 25% nature, uncooked, or live food — fruit and vegetables — and push it up to 100% in 4-5 days. Stay there 1-2 day, and again cut it down by 10% and in another 5 days, reach 50% raw food, 50% cooked. This is ideal for most people to be active 16-18 h/day

If you eat cooked food, it may take you 15 mins to eat. If you eat raw food, it takes longer b/c you chew more. But your body will tell you your meal is over in those 15 mins. Be a little more conscious of how much you are eating.

Restlessness to Restfulness

Stress is not because of work — important to remember. Bosses, colleagues, deadlines… These are not inherently stressful. It is our compulsive reaction to the situations that causes stress. Stress is a certain level of internal friction. One can easily lubricate the inner mechanism with some amount of inner work and awareness. It is your own inability to handle your own system that is stressing you out.

How do you stay free of stress, so you have same level of enthusiasm, relaxation and happiness, morning or evening?

Slow down. Run your body more efficiently and at a relaxed pace.

The body doesn’t need sleep, but restfulness.

Whatever you do, do it easily, joyfully.

Don’t battle with life. You are not anti-life; you are life. Just get in tune with it, and you will see that you will pass through it easily. Keep yourself fit and well. Do some activity that you enjoy: play a game, swim, walk, run. Be active and relaxed at the same time.

When you feel relaxed, awaken.

When it comes to food and sleep, your body is the best judge.

Keep the body in a way that it is not longing to avoid or escape life. Maintain it so that you are longing to come awake 🙂

If you have not known the sensuousness of life-giving breath that is on every moment of your life, how can you begin to know any other kind. Experience the orgasmic nature of the breathing process called ana pana sati yoga, the yoga of incoming and outgoing breath. Ana pana
literally means ‘in and out.’ Sati means ‘female consort.’ So the reference here is clearly to orgasmic union. It shows how the simple incoming and outgoing breath can become a source of nameless ecstasies.

The simplest way to experience a state of union is this simple namaskar yoga. Put your hands together and pay loving attention to any object you use or consume, or any form of life you encounter. When you bring this sense of awareness into every simple act, your experience of life will never be the same again. There is even the possibility that you could unite the world!

Sex is not the most powerful urge. Hunger is.

Most of the time, thinking about sex is just compulsive behavior. After a certain age, when the play of hormones subsides, once again, it will not matter what reproductive organs someone has.

Your body is just a loan from this planet. What you call ‘death’ is just Mother Earth reclaiming the loan that she offered to you. All life on this planet is just a recycle of the Earth.

Fear is the result of the incompleteness of your existence. If you have not explored life in its magnitude and multidimensionality, you have limited yourself to the physical body, fear is a natural consequence.

Once you live a compulsive life, you are living the life of a slave. Don’t limit yourself to the narrow realm of the physical.

Remind yourself at least once an hour that everything you’re carrying are things you’ve accumulated. Disidentify with your things. Don’t let your compulsive thoughts shift you from the existential to the psychological.

You are, therefore you may think 🙂

Either you learn to live with creation, or you manufacture your own creation in your head.

Attention – turn what is sporadic and intermittent into a flow

Just sit alone for an hour. See what thoughts dominate your mind.

If you know how to touch a person deep enough to touch humanity, each one of us is the same.

To bring out humanity, it takes much more involvement. It means giving yourself.

Love is never between two people. It is what happens within you. Just spend time with something. If you look at everything lovingly, the whole world becomes beautiful in your experience.

Devotion is not a dissection of life, but a total embrace.

The divine is not an entity sitting up there; it is a living force every moment of your life. Devotion makes you aware of this.

Embrace Mystery

If your intelligence is sufficiently evolved and mature, you realize that the more you analyze, the further away you are from any conclusion. Life becomes more mysterious than before. The more you delve into life, you see that it is an endless and unfathomable process. You cannot get it because you are it. If you simply sit here and breathe, you will know life better than through any deep analysis.

A devotee is someone who is willing to dissolve into the object of devotion. If you are a devotee of life, you will become one with it. Don’t be an outsider to the life process. Become a devotee. Dissolve.

Prana pratishtha uses your own life energies to consecrate something. When you consecrate a form in this way, it does not need any maintenance. It is quite literally forever. The Indian temples were never places of prayer. The temple was like a public battery-charging space. The idea is to sit and imbibe the energy of the place.

You are encouraged to just close your eyes and be in the space for some time.

Shiva = that which is not

Linga = the form, assumed to be an ellipsoid or 3D ellipse. Modern cosmologist have identified that the core of every galaxy is always an ellipsoid.

Empower your places:
With rice flour or some grain, draw a triangle, and an upside down triangle on top of it
Place a small ghee or clarified butter, lamp in a plate full of water at the center
Place a flower in the water

The flower in the water represents earth.
Akash or ether, is always present

Earth, air, fire, water

Mount Kailash (the mountain peak in western Tibet, considered a sacred place of immeasurable power and antiquity) is where the maximum amount of knowledge has been store for a very long time in energy form. Kailash is the greatest mystical library on the planet.

…more

Leave a Reply