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But three months after starting yoga, my body started coming awake at three forty every morning, without any external prompting, as it does even today. After I woke, my practices would simply happen, no matter where I was and in what situation, without a single day’s break.
People think spirituality is about looking for God or truth or the ultimate. The problem is you have already defined what you are looking for. It is not the object of your search that is important; it is the faculty of looking. The ability to simply look without motive is missing in the world today. Everybody is a psychological creature, wanting to assign meaning to everything. Seeking is not about looking for something. It is about enhancing your perception, your very faculty of seeing.
People would look at me and burst into tears. Many claimed that they were relieved of conditions of physical and mental suffering just by looking at me. I found myself healed in a matter of hours of conditions that would have taken me months to get out of through normal medical care. However, I gave all of this little importance. This ability to transform my external and internal reality quite dramatically has continued within me and around me to this very day. It is not something I have ever tried consciously to achieve. It is just that once one is in touch with this deeper dimension of intelligence, which is the very basis of our existence here, life turns quite naturally miraculous. In about six to eight weeks, this incredible experience became a living reality. During this time, everything about me changed dramatically. My physical appearance—the shape of my eyes, my gait, my voice, the very alignment of my body—began changing so drastically that people around me started to notice as well.
Until this time, I had completely refused to accept anything in my life that did not fit into a rational and logical framework. Slowly, I began to realize that it is life that is the ultimate intelligence. Human intellect is mere smartness that ensures survival. But true intelligence is just life and life—and that which is the source of life. Nothing else.
I also began to experience a heightened sensitivity to the feelings of others. Sometimes just the sight of an unknown person on the street in a state of grief could make me weep. I could not believe the states of misery that human beings were capable of enduring when here I was, simply bursting with ecstasy for no reason at all.
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.
Whether you sought a career, started a business, made money, or built a family, it was always because you wanted just one simple thing: joy.
Most people think peace and joy are the goals of the spiritual life. This is a fallacy. Peace and joy are the basic requirements for a life of well-being. If you want to enjoy your dinner tonight, you must be peaceful and happy.
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.
Reactivity is enslavement. Responsibility is freedom.
AI Summary
Inner Engineering by Sadhguru presents key insights from the Yoga tradition. The 10 passages above capture the essential teachings.
Core Themes:
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Key Passages: Highlights 1, 3, and 10 are particularly representative.
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