Loneliness

X says, “If I am with A, I want to keep A running after me because that’s what makes me feel important.” The more A tells me that “Without you I feel lonely, lonely, and lonely,” the more X feels important.

Does X sound familiar? Most people in the world…

If you will go and figure out the fact of loneliness, it is the woman who is more susceptible to loneliness. Man makes merry even in the company of man. You would find a boys’ gang going all over, all around, a group of six boys having fun; but rarely…

Do not start considering that suffering and restlessness and boredom and loneliness and fear are the natural modes of life. They are not. Never, never allow this belief to settle within you.

If life is boredom, loneliness and fear, that is unnatural. Just because you see a lot of sorrow…

Questioner (Q): In the spiritual journey, it is very, very difficult to find companionship, community, or like-minded people—people you can talk to about your experiences on this journey. So, it becomes a very lonely conquest. It is obviously a very lonely conquest because eventually it is a conquest of the

Questioner: Sir, how to overcome emotional dependency and loneliness?

Acharya Prashant: First of all, there are not several types of dependencies. These types are very superficial. We might say, “I have material dependency, I have financial dependency, I have physical dependency, I have emotional dependency, I have spiritual dependency, dependency’s…

Questioner (Q): My question is about loneliness. There is so much technology available for social interaction these days. We can instantly connect to people from all over the world, have video meetings and such things, and then there are all the social media platforms. But in spite of having all…

Questioner (Q): What is attachment?

Acharya Prashant (AP): The way our brain is constituted, it has nothing of its own. If you ask the brain, "Who are you?" It will not be able to say anything if it has been kept in complete isolation. But the brain is never in…

Questioner (Q): Sir, I want to ask regarding loneliness. Today we have all the technology available to connect to each other, we can instantly connect to people even a thousand miles away using zoom, etc. Still, we have become so lonely. Why?

Acharya Prashant (AP): See, it’s not that we…

Questioner (Q): The question that I have for today from the reading is that it appears when one is trying to escape loneliness, reading from some spiritual books, or practicing some meditational techniques, it is also not considered the right thing to do. Could you shed some light on it?…

Questioner: What is aloneness?

Acharya Prashant: Aloneness is not being free of others and living without others. Aloneness is to live without oneself. Aloneness does not have much to do with the so-called 'others', aloneness has everything to do with the one called ‘oneself’. Others appear many, appear outside but…

Research has shown that loneliness is found throughout the society, including among people in marriages along with other strong relationships, and those with successful careers. As a subjective emotion, people experience loneliness even when surrounded by other people.

But, do you know that the word…

Questioner: Acharya Ji, what is the difference between Loneliness and Aloneness?

Acharya Prashant: Simply put,

Loneliness is when you are not alright with yourself.

People often wonder about the effect of spirituality upon married life. Often it happens that one partner in a marriage starts moving deeper into spirituality, and this causes anxiety in the other partner. So how far do a normal marriage and Spirituality go together?

Spirituality is a movement into the…

Love and loneliness will actually go together.

You see, love is forever a movement. Love is an attraction, a pull. We all feel that irresistible urge and it is so quick, spontaneous, and comes without preparation, planning or warning that we hardly have the time to know about its origins,…

Questioner (Q): Is it possible to live alone?

Acharya Prashant (AP): Why does this question arise?

Q: Because I don’t want to get married.

Questioner (Q): Can one be lonely even while being immersed?

Acharya Prashant (AP): Yes, of course. See, it is not a question of ‘Can one be or not?’, Whatever is there, is there. It is there, now, live with it; acknowledge it. Live with it without hoping for a change…

“Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow. Solitude is the ally of sorrow as well as a companion of spiritual exaltation.”

-Kahlil Gibran (The Broken Wings)

Question: Why is it that I always want to remain busy? Till the time I am busy, I think that the life is normal. But as soon as I find free time of some fifteen-twenty days, I feel that I am in prison. Why does this happen?

Speaker: You sense…

Question: I am a slave of worldliness. I always need a company. How to get rid of this dependence?

Acharya Prashant: First of all we have to realise that what do we do to the company, and what does that company does to us?

Question: Sir, Why and how when somebody is non-attached to people and things make him less compassionate or loving in the eyes of the society and when less talkative, anti-social?

Answer: Ankita,

Look at people. People know of themselves only as bodies bound in time. They think of their minds

Listener: Why do things appear different?

Speaker: The more distracted the mind is; the more it believes in diversity, the more it believes in different things to be different. Taking different things, letting your mind be subjected to differences, is what is called as chaos. Understand this clearly. Letting your

THis is AP Article

Sunday Guardian ColumnSunday Guardian ColumnSunday Guardian ColumnSunday Guardian ColumnSunday Guardian Column

हमारा मिजाज हमेशा दूसरों और परिस्थितियों पर निर्भर करता है। नतीजे आपकी उम्मीदों के मुताबिक नहीं रहे। इसलिए अब आपको मनोबल बढ़ाने वाले किसी प्रेरक वक्ता की ज़रूरत है। जैसे ही वह व्यक्ति चला जाता है, आपकी ऊर्जा भी थम जाती है। लेकिन जीने का एक और तरीका भी है। अपने भीतर गहराई में, मुझे एक ऐसा बिंदु मिलता है जिसे कोई बाहरी परिस्थिति छू नहीं सकती। जो कुछ भी होता है, वह सतह पर ही घटित होता है। वह स्थिर, उदासीन और तटस्थ बना रहता है। तब आप सचमुच स्वतंत्र होते हैं।

Does the person you are with encourage you to read? You have to ask, “What does he bring for me, roses or books?”

Be very cautious of those who bring roses for you, especially red roses. Books are what we all need, and books are dangerous. Books are dangerous because…

The one relationship that is of maximum importance is the one you have with yourself.

Hurt is not automatic. Somewhere there is an admission from you that you are hurt, and that you would be hurt, and that you would call yourself as hurt. Don’t call yourself as hurt, and see what happens.

Hurt is not an obligation. Hurt is a choice. Insecurity, fear, temptations—none…

Have you looked at kids playing? If you look at kids playing and if you look at animals playing, you won’t find much difference. In fact, human kids go along very well with animal kids. Later on, when we cover ourselves with a lot of acquired knowledge, with a lot…

What does it mean to have an inauthentic relationship?

Welcome pain. You have no option. That’s the way life is meant to be. Life is suffering. Because not only are you designed to have pain, you are also designed to resist pain.

Have pain, and have a lot of depth in your being. So much depth that it can…

There might be people around you who make it compulsory for you to smoke, not because they urge you to smoke, but because they put you in so much of tension that you will need to smoke. But you are deriving some benefits from those people, so you will never…

Just as the ego loves to take credit, it also loves to play the victim.

If something good has happened, “I did it!”

If something bad happened, “It happened to me.”

You were once a girl; you would have read mathematics, history, science, geography, languages. Didn’t you find inspiring figures there? Didn’t those books arouse fantastic ideas in you?

I am sure that when you were younger, you thought of excellence, didn’t you? You would have had dreams. In your dreams,…

Happiness and sadness are both wonderful, are both welcome.

But in some deep sense, sadness is a little better than happiness. It teaches us a little more than happiness does. It elevates us a little more than happiness does. It has a certain purifying effect that happiness does not quite…

A fellow who irritates you and keeps your mind agitated, why is he present in your life as a friend? How exactly is he taking care of you if his presence leads to an unsettled mind? What are these tags?

The only definition of a friend is someone who brings…

If you are suffering, there is nobody but you who is responsible. Unless you fully accept that responsibility, there is no freedom. If your suffering is just incidental, then how can there be freedom from it?—because incidents can happen any way, any day.

You have to, first of all, clearly…

Both the genders have become even more anchored to their physical identity. The more you do that, the more you are in misery because, really, the body is not who you are.

There are places better and higher than the place of your gender specific hormones. Why do you want…

Spirituality just needs basic self-honesty, self-awareness. There is nothing mystical, nothing magical about it, but that is what it has been associated with. I am not talking of chanting; I am not talking of chakras; I am not talking of flying snakes; I am not talking of magical seeds. Not…