04/06/2026
One who is happy within, who rejoices within, who is illuminated within - that yogi attains the supreme liberation. ~ Bhagavad Gita 5.24
On the spiritual path, the biggest shift happens when you realise that joy is an inside job.
But we are trained to live the other way around. We keep changing the outside in the hope that the inside will finally settle. A new job, a better boss, a more exciting city, a different partner, a better holiday, a fresh plan, a new aesthetic, another version of life. We keep rearranging the furniture of our outer world, hoping the inner room will feel more beautiful. And sometimes it does, for a while. But that kind of excitement is short-lived. One day you realise you have run out of things to change outside, and still something within remains restless, dull, unsatisfied.
This is where Krishna’s teaching becomes deeply practical. He speaks of the person who is happy within, who rejoices within, who is illuminated within. He is not describing someone who rejects the world or stops enjoying beauty, love, food, friendship, music, or success. He is describing someone whose main power source is no longer external. Their peace is not entirely outsourced. Their joy is not waiting for life to finally behave.
This becomes most important on those days when mornings do not feel like mornings, when grief still sits in the chest like a stone, when old pain seeps into the bones, when uncertainty invites anxiety to perform its circus, when nothing seems to be going according to plan. Even then, you still have free will. You can still choose. And one of the most sacred choices available to you is to choose joy.
Not the joy of pleasure, stimulation, dopamine hits, likes, applause, goals achieved, cars bought, or holidays taken. But the quieter, stranger joy that is intrinsic to your being. The unreasonable happiness caused by nothing but your own aliveness. Joy that becomes your inner compass, your spiritual GPS, the true north star you had misplaced while living by everybody else’s map.
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