By Sadhguru – Founder, Isha Foundation

Sadhguru: People must decide whether freedom or bondage is the highest value in their life. The problem is that for most people, if they are free, they feel lost. For example, if they were in the empty space of the mountains with no one around them, they wouldn’t feel free — they would think they were lost.

Most people cannot handle freedom because to handle freedom, you need a certain clarity and strength. People are always trying to bind themselves, but they talk about freedom all the time. If you really set them free, they will suffer immensely. This is an evolutionary issue, in the sense, human beings are like a caged bird right now. If you keep a bird caged for a long period of time and then take the door off the cage one day, the bird will still not fly away. From inside, it will protest that it is not free but it will not fly away. The human condition is just like that.

Let us look at what needs to happen if you want to be free. What you need to understand is that all human experience has a chemical basis to it. What you call as joy, misery, stress, anxiety, agony and ecstasy are different kinds of chemistry. At least ecstasy you know is another kind of chemistry. Your experience of life has a chemical basis to it. In other words, what you call as yourself right now is a chemical soup. The question is, are you a great soup or a lousy soup?

Right now, if you have a chemistry of blissfulness, then whether someone is around or not around, it is fantastic because your experience of life is no longer determined by what you have and what you do not have. Once your way of being is not determined by anything outside of you, there is no such thing as loneliness.

Simple tips to make joy your constant companion:

Keep accounts of your joyfulness

In business, only one who keeps accounts knows whether he or she is making money or going down. Similarly, you must maintain an account — “How many moments of joy did I have today?” We are not using joy as a goal. Joy does not mean that you attained to something. Joy is a measure — it simply means life has come to ease, you are not messing yourself up. Every day, if you keep accounts, you will see that no matter what the hell happens in life situations, you will not go down.

Wake up with a smile

When you get up in the morning, the first thing you should do is smile because just the fact that you woke up is not a small thing. Thousands of people who slept last night did not wake up today. So smile because you woke up. For millions of people, someone dear to them did not wake up this morning. Everyone who is dear to you woke up — Wow! It’s a great day, isn’t it? You may think this is ridiculous, but this is the most valuable thing — that you are alive and everything that matters to you is alive. Appreciate it and smile at least.

Remember it’s a brief life

A significant thing every human being has to do is structure their psychological and emotional framework around the most fundamental fact of their life — their mortality. You need to celebrate and enjoy every moment of your life because life does not wait for you even for a moment You are mortal and it is ticking away. So there is no time for frustration, depression, anxiety, anger or for any unpleasantness in this life.

Become love

For 5 minutes every day, sit with something that does not mean anything to you — may be a tree, a pebble, a worm or an insect. After some time, you will find you can look upon it with as much love as you hold for your wife, husband, mother, child or dog. May be the worm does not know this, the insect does not know this — that does not matter. If you can look at everything lovingly the whole world explodes into a beautiful phenomenon for you. You realise love is not something that you do, it is the way you are.

Meditation

We can give you a simple, 12-minute meditation called Isha Kriya. It is available online and as an app. It gives you this possibility that if you simply sit here, there is a little space between you and your body, you and your mind and between you and the world. Once you create this space within you, once you know what is you and what is not you, that is the end of suffering. When there is no fear of suffering, you will be able to look at everything with utmost clarity and address every issue to the best of your intelligence and capability. Situations will never overwhelm you.

[Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, a yogi, is a visionary, humanitarian and a prominent spiritual leader. An author, poet and internationally-renowned speaker, Sadhguru’s wit and piercing logic provoke and widen our perception of life. www.ishafoundation.org]