The source of joy

The whole science and wisdom of what we refer to as Inner Engineering means not seeing joy as something that we could achieve in our life, but seeing joy as the very basis of our lives. Is this the only goal of our life? No. Joy is not the goal, it is the square one of your life. Other wonderful things can happen only if this happens. Otherwise, you will live constantly with the fear of misery striking you. 

Once it happened in a kindergarten school, the teacher walked into the classroom and found a muddy puddle in the middle of the class, intentionally made by somebody. She looked at it, and asked “Who made this mess in the classroom?” Not one of these tiny tots opened their mouth, because even at that age, they had certain camaraderie about not squealing. 

The teacher asked again but nobody said a word. Then the teacher thought there was no point pushing it, and she said, “Let us all – everyone including me – close our eyes. Whoever made this mess, we will give him or her five minutes, just to clean it up and go back and sit. Nobody needs to know who did it, but you must clean it up.” 

So, everybody closed their eyes and suddenly the teacher heard a patter of feet, the bucket and some other noises. She gave this enough time, and again heard the patter of feet running back and sitting down. When everything was quiet, everybody opened their eyes to find one more muddy pool, and alongside it was written “PHANTOM STRIKES AGAIN!”  

How many times has this happened in your life? At every stage in your life, you think “Oh, if I get this job, this is it, my life is made, but just a few years down the line, the same job gave you diabetes and blood pressure.” You thought “If I get married, that’s it, my life is made, and you know what happened after that.”

So, at every stage you think “this is it,” but life strikes back again and again. Life strikes back because you are not in tune with your own basic existence and not because there is something wrong with creation. You have gotten identified with petty things that you gathered. You have become an accumulation, you have no existence of your own. 

You need to understand that whatever you consider right now as the source of your joy, is just an excuse. Joy is the natural choice. You don’t need any teaching or advice or scriptures to make this choice. The very natural choice is joy because that is your original nature, that is not something that you have to desire or pursue or attain. If you fall back into your original nature, joyfulness is the only way you will be.