I have been an avid watcher of videos by Sadhguru on the internet. Seems like he is the real rockstar out there. Given the level of insanity in the world, I found one person who has the most sane things to say and put our lives into some perspective. What he offers is simple practical understanding of how we should be in this world. The stress he puts on the "being" of being a "human being" has piqued my interest since quite some time. And so when I stumbled on an "Inner Engineering" webinar, I jumped at the chance to experience this first hand. What I chronicle here on, will just be my understanding of that one hour of interaction with one of the instructors. I was ready with my pen and paper, eager to note down some nuggets of wisdom and boy did I start filling out page after page, trying to lap up all that was being dispensed. Pardon me for my verbatim usage of several things that were said. There are simply no words to explain things better. The clarity of thoughts, intent of words and effectiveness of the talk was something that will be with me for a long time.
The instructor started with a very simple premise. Why do we do what we do in our everyday life? The ultimate purpose is to be happy. The pursuit of happiness is all it is. But the joyful nature we once had, when we were five years old, is no longer with us, now that we have turned thirty. The happiness graph has gone down for most of us. Whatever we choose to endure ourselves through, we just know that towards the end it will give us something that will lead to happiness (of some sort). If we look around, how many happy faces do we really see? People go on with their lives with long faces most of the time. We have not been able to sustain or even potentially grow the blissful happiness we had when we were kids. This means something must be wrong with us.
Stress is the most common attribute anyone would associate with their jobs. Everyone seems to find their job stressful. You might be stressed for some reason, but so is your boss for another reason. A person working behind the counter at a store thinks he is stressed. So is the president of a country. How come there is so much stress everywhere and everybody is affected by it?
No job is actually stressful. It becomes stressful when the individual does not know how to manage the situation around him. How is it that given the same situation someone is bogged down with stress while someone else breezes through it? Simply because one person is able to manage things better than the other. These bouts of mental tension build up day after day and the agitation of the mind begins to translate into agitation of the body. When you drive a car at a relaxed speed, it will go miles and miles before needing any maintenance. But if you drive it at high speeds all the time, there is only so much distance it can go before something breaks down. The same is true with our body. Too much stress can only take you thus far, before you begin to get troubled by some disease. The mind is source of most illnesses. But you can deal with all the day to day grind with proper management. We have been engineering the outside world for several centuries to make things work for us, serve us and make things more convinient. But how often have we done anything for the mind, taken care of the "inner" world? Inner engineering shows the way to do that.
Things like peace, happiness, anger or agony are nothing but different levels of chemical energy in the human body. It is something hapenning within us because of things hapenning around us. Knowing well that we may not have control over things outside us, we should definitely know that we have control on things hapenning within us. What we become is solely our choice. Given a choice no one wants to be miserable, but if the situation around us is not the most favorable, we can still choose what we want to become. It is possible to become peaceful and joyful again just as our five year old self, even if we think we have lost that ability at the age of thirty.
The body is at its most restful state when it is asleep. A well rested today will lead to an energetic tomorrow. But if we are sleep deprived for consequtive days, it starts impacting the body. The quality of rest that we have, affects the body. It is the quality that matters and not quantity. Someone could have slept only a few hours, but if he are well rested and relaxed, he has better ability to concentrate, his productivity is increased and he is less stressful as well.
Our memory is nothing but a series of things that have been hapenning to us and been continuously recorded by our senses. Every thing that we experience by way of reception via the senses becomes a memory but how often are we able to recollect things that we want, when we want. Maybe we remember everything else around that event, expect for that one tiny detail and later on it may just pop into our minds, when we are less stressed about trying to recollect it. As an analogy, try finding a book in a library where there are million other books all put into a heap with no organized catalog of any kind. Within that chaos it will be impossible to find what we are looking for. But if it were a well catalogued library, looking up a book among millions will be very easy. Just like that a mind that is relaxed will be more alert and receptive of things hapenning around it, able to process and recollect things effortlessly and stress free. This kind of organized process helps improve concentration and productivity.
Remember that time when you went on a vacation? You were happy, joyful, peaceful and you could feel it. You were like that for a week but you could not sustain it for longer. Once you were back from vacation and caught up in your daily grind, the peace earned on the vacation was gone in no time. Was it the place you were at or the person you were with that gave you that joy? Or did it essentially come from within you? If so can't we learn to by joyful all the time. No one wants to be miserable by choice, yet that is the case for many of us since we haven't understood the simple fact that joy has to come from within. It is our response to whatever we are facing wherever we are.
To be joyful we need to have more control on our mind. But it is not always the case. We may have some control over our body but we do not have any control on our mind. It is difficult to control the mind. It will not obey you and will do exactly what you told it not to do. Inner Engineering is offering ways which will enable us to control our faculties . Its not a teaching nor a philosophy but a scientifically proven method to be in better control of our mind, emotions, inner peace and the joy that we can experience.
Those were all the nuggets of wisdom that I could gather from the webinar. I am not sure how much of it was "lost in translation" or given a twist because of my "interpretation". But all I know is, I listened intently to what was being said and wrote down enough to serve as a reminder that though I am way beyond the age of thirty, I can still follow this path and learn to be blissful and joyful as my five year old self. The seeking has only just begun.
