Keep the Wheels Spinning: The Purpose of Sadhana

Question: I’ve been doing my practices for three years and I haven’t had any great experiences or seen any changes in me. What should motivate me to continue doing the practices?

Sadhguru: You need to understand what a practice is. If you want to consciously move your hand, you can. If you want to move your mind somewhere, you can do that too, to some extent. Similarly, you can move your emotions. Can you move your energies? No. We do the practices so that that part of your life begins to move too. If everything moves – your body, your mind, your emotions – but your energies don’t move, you still don’t go anywhere. The practice is to loosen that dimension of your life which is normally not in your hands.

Your physical body is largely in your hands, but still it is not moving the way you want it. It is doing its own things. Your mind could easily be taken into your hands, but it may also not be doing what you want right now. It may be doing a thousand other things. Your emotions can easily be focused and taken where you want, but that also may not be happening. But if you make up your mind, you can move your body, mind, and emotions. Every one of you is capable of that if you really make up your mind. But even if you make up your mind, you cannot move your energies. This is not in your grasp at all.

The sadhana is brought into your life so that that dimension of your life begins to move. If transformation is not happening, it means that you are not doing much about the other three dimensions. Your body, your mind and your emotions have not been disciplined, but you are doing practices because you think it is some kind of a magic wand that will pay off for you. It will, but still…

Four-wheel drive!

It is like, right now, in some places in the ashram, there is a certain level of soggy soil. When you drive, one mistake and you will be stuck. Even if just one wheel is stuck and the other three wheels are spinning, still you cannot go anywhere. You are stuck badly enough. Sometimes, two are stuck, the other two are spinning – you are not going anywhere. Sometimes, all three are stuck. If only one is spinning – nothing! If all are stuck, that is a different matter. When all are stuck, you cannot call it a car anymore – it is part of the earth. You are not going anywhere.

Life is just like that. If your journey has to be from one dimension to another, all the four have to move. On one or two wheels, you can still do your career, manage your family and be successful in the world, but if you want to move from one dimension to another, all the four have to move – there is no other way. Otherwise you won’t go anywhere. So you may be doing your practices but neglecting the other aspects.

We have always told you this, but in a different way… But the younger generation is slowly reducing their communication to five-word sentences. You must make a sentence only with five words, otherwise they will lose their focus. As people are becoming like this, I am also trying to make the teaching like this, because otherwise, it goes over people’s heads.

A crash course

So I am giving you a formula kind of teaching. This is, every day in the morning, before you do your sadhana, you give yourself a crash course of Inner Engineering. If one dose a day is not enough, remind yourself every hour and do your sadhana. You will see, it will work much better because now, the other three dimensions – body, mind, and emotions – are being taken care of.

You have to remind yourself. Otherwise, your thought, your emotion, your physicality keeps getting entangled with just about everything around you. If you are just trying to pump up your energies, it won’t go anywhere because three wheels are stuck, one wheel is spinning. So, every day, every hour, or why not every minute, remind yourself. It just takes ten seconds.

On the first day, when you were initiated, it worked. Later on, why is not working? You are not setting the necessary conditions, that’s all. Otherwise, as you practice, it should work better. Anything that you do should work better as you practice. If it does not work better, it is simply because you are not setting the needed conditions. So release the other three wheels. This wheel (the energies) will spin anyway. Still it may not move ahead because you may be in a deep ditch. It is okay, keep spinning. As long as your wheels are spinning, even if you are not moving, all you need is a nudge. When we feel you are ready to go, we may give you a nudge, and you will start moving. But if wheels are stuck, that’s tough. Then you need much more than a nudge. So you must keep all the four wheels spinning.

Editor’s Note: Find out more about Inner Engineering, which is available through classes, and online as well.