Rejoicing in your own self
From satsang with Giten on The Upanishads, 26 April, 2018, in Stockholm
This sutra says that the seeker should always give up delighting in others, and start delighting in himself.
We rejoice, but never in ourselves, only in others. We simply pay no attention to ourselves.
You are sitting alone and unoccupied and feeling unhappy. You think that if another person arrives then there should be some joy.
Alone, you begin to feel sad. Alone, you are not happy.
You cannot give happiness to your own self, so how can you give it to others?
This sutra says rejoice in your own self.
You are sitting alone, be joyous.
Several spiritual traditions emphasizes joy, ecstasy and rejoicing in your self.
The fundamental principle of the Sufis is not to make your happiness dependent on the other. Sufis emphasize to associate happiness with your own self, not with others.
Practice as a meditation to sit under a tree, alone, letting go of others and the world, allowing yourself to love and accept yourself as you are without judging or condemning yourself – and be happy.
We usually become happy for some outer reason.
Happiness without any reason is bliss.
One is simply rejoicing from with ourselves.
Bliss can only be without any reason.
When you seek happiness for a reason – in some person, in power, in money, in a position, in status, in fame, the end result is always unhappiness.
Seeking happiness in some outer cause will always result in sorrow.
Happiness always comes from our own self, from our own inner being.
When we discover the source of happiness within our own self it means that we do not have to go anywhere else searching for it.
The outer world is to fall in love with other people. Spirituality is the search to fall in love with our own self.
It is to allow the happiness to flow from within ourselves, not from the outside.
It is to rejoice in our own being, in our own existence.
– Swami Dhyan Giten
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