Journal
Notes from the practice.
Written down as I go — no schedule, no drip campaign, just whatever’s actually true at the time.
What six months of Inner Engineering actually changed
It was September 2013. I sat through what’s called Initiation — the actual entry point into Inner Engineering, though nothing about that name prepares you for what it does. What happened that day was, honestly, magic. I understand more of the mechanics behind it now, but I’m not going to walk through them here — explaining the mysticism away doesn’t do justice to what Inner Engineering actually is. It changes something different in every person who goes through it.
For me, six months of daily practice did something specific: happiness stopped being an event and became a default setting. Joy, too. Problems stopped being hurdles — they just became things to handle. Saying what I felt stopped being a struggle. Every single day, not occasionally.
I changed in ways I still find hard to fully explain. I could feel the aging process in my own body slowing — maybe even reversing. For a young mind at the time, that fascinated me precisely because it wasn’t something I read about, watched, or reasoned my way into. It was true from the inside, not the outside.
There was a feeling of actually exploring each moment as it happened — a kind of timeless, boundless stillness sitting underneath ordinary emotion. I could go on, but I don’t want to reach for English or psychological terms here, because they dilute what it actually was. It’s pure bliss. If you’re practicing Inner Engineering and wondering whether to keep going — don’t stop. Just continue.
The morning routine my grandmother followed without ever calling it “wellness”
Three experiences I wish someone had handed me on day one
Why I stopped saying “meditation” and started saying dhyāna
The deeper I went, the less the word “meditation” seemed to describe what was actually happening — sitting still, eyes closed, exploring the silence inside. I didn’t go looking for this understanding in a book. It came later, once the experience itself was already clear to me.
Historical texts classify these inner states with far more precision than the single English word “meditation” allows for. The word I actually reach for, in my own mother tongue, is dhyāna. It’s a more accurate word for what’s happening when the eyes close and the sitting begins.
I still say “meditation” to people who don’t know the word dhyāna — not because it’s right, but because it gets the point across. But internally, and increasingly out loud, I’ve stopped pretending the two words mean the same thing.