Lessons from the rebel yogi

“Inner Engineering: A yogi’s guide to joy” by Sadhguru

Sadhguru is like the rebel yogi, the contrarian guru, that says spirituality is overrated, that teaches us NOT to believe in what the many gurus are saying if you don’t agree with them (including him). He’s bluntly honest, and often slap us back into grounded reality with his logical approach, which is supported by plenty of stories that are amusing and often funny.

In fact, right at the very few early paragraphs he dismantles the feel-good but empty or misleading mantras that we use to live by in the modern society. Mantras such as  “be in the moment”, “do one thing at a time”, “positive thinking”, the utopian idea of heaven, and as simple as the word “stress management” in which he commented “why would anybody want to manage stress?”

And instead, he offers a worldview that is grounded in common sense and, increasingly as the book progresses, in Yoga practises where he discusses about mind, body, and energy from the point of view of what he call the “science of yoga”.

It is a soothing book to read, one that serve as a calm reminder in this fast paced world of our basic senses, one that teaches us how to be more connected with the universe, and with its basic teachings can lead us to becoming joyful as an effect. Because everything that is happening in our lives we experience it within ourselves, which is controllable for us.

As Sadhguru remark, “Human experience may be stimulated or catalyzed by external situations, but the source is within. Pain or pleasure, joy or misery, agony or ecstasy, happens only inside you. Human folly is that people are always trying to extract joy from the outside. You may use the outside as a stimulus or trigger, but the real thing always comes from within.”

In addition, I read this book using audiobook with Sadhguru himself as the narrator, and with some bell sound effect for every Sadhana part (practices), and a soft chanting background in every box of story. It really brings the reading experience into a whole different feel.