u/Mitali_M_INDIA

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Imagine being around 17, growing up in a small village in medieval France, with no military training, and stepping into a war that had been going on for years.

That was Joan of Arc.

In 1429, Joan went to Charles, the French heir, convinced that she had a mission to help France. She was allowed to accompany French forces, and her involvement in the lifting of the siege of Orléans made her famous. Charles was crowned at Reims soon after. The following year, Joan was captured by the Burgundians, handed over to the English side, tried, and executed in 1431 at just 19. Her conviction was later overturned in 1456, and she was declared to be a saint in 1920.

We can easily turn such a story into a heroic tale:

“Look what an extraordinary person she was.”

But perhaps there is another way to look at it.

In our own lives, how quickly do we decide what we can or cannot do?

“I’m too young.”

“I don't have enough experience.”

“People like me don't do this.”

“I’m not confident enough.”

“I’m not capable.”

Sometimes the situation really does place limits on us. But sometimes we add another limit through the story we have created about ourselves.

And there is another trap.

We see someone extraordinary and immediately think, “I must become extraordinary too.”

That is not necessarily freedom either. It can simply be another form of ego.

Maybe the real question is much simpler:

When something genuinely needs to be done, can we look beyond the image we have created of ourselves and do what is actually required ?

Joan's story doesn't have to become a lesson in becoming a hero.

It can simply make us question the boundaries we take for granted.

How many of our “I can't” statements are facts, and how many have we never seriously examined?

And if we discover that one of those limits is only a belief, what are we willing to do about it?

What is one “I can't” you have accepted about yourself without really questioning it ?

Source: "Britannica : Joan of Arc"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Joan-of-Arc

Go Vegan for them

These are some photos of me from some time ago and from now.

The difference in the pictures isn’t just in my hair; it’s in my thinking too.

Since childhood, for many people I was a “good and cultured girl.”

Then a time came when social norms and what people said began to influence me so much that I started doing many things: going to the temple every day, putting on a tilak, wearing a Rudraksha mala of 108 beads, offering water with mantras to Tulsi and the Sun, and so on.

At that time I felt that this was probably the proof of being good and religious.

To be honest, I didn’t even know the meaning of the mantras I was chanting.

Still, I kept doing it because I thought that by doing all this I was becoming a “good girl.”

And honestly, when I did all this, people started calling me even more good, cultured, and religious.

But then I started listening to Acharya Ji.

Gradually, I began to understand that there is a huge difference between doing something just because people consider it good and doing it after really understanding it.

And then I left all of that.

Maybe it was easier for me to drop it because I hadn’t been doing it for very long, only about a month or two.

Today I have cut my hair short, I have stopped doing all those rituals, and now if something is said in the name of religion that I don’t find right on the basis of reason and understanding, I don’t accept it just because people call it religious or cultured.

The same people who once used to say,

“She’s such a good girl, so well cultured,”

now say,

“The girl is slipping out of our hands, her ways have worsened, she’s completely gone astray.”

But honestly, now when someone calls me “spoiled,” I actually enjoy it more. 😅

Because now it doesn’t matter to me whether someone calls me “good” or “spoiled.”

I only want that whatever I do, I do it with understanding. I question. I think for myself. And live my life according to my own understanding.

I no longer want to try to be “good” just to please anyone.

I want to do my work, and live by my own understanding.

My deep, deep gratitude to Acharya Ji ❤🙏

Reflection post by Aashu AP Gita Student

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“Why can't I speak in front of others?”

It sounds like a question about confidence. But in Chapter 3 of Why Can't I Speak in Front of Others?, Acharya Prashant turns the question back to the person asking it.

A student had been sitting quietly for almost an hour, afraid to ask a question. Yet when he finally stood up and asked it, there was no great fear in the actual act of speaking.

So where was the fear?

Perhaps not in asking the question, but in thinking about asking it.

Before speaking, the mind starts running ahead: Should I ask? What if my question sounds stupid? What will they think of me? What if everyone laughs? What if my manager thinks I don't understand ?

Notice what has happened. We are no longer looking at the question. We are looking at ourselves through the imagined eyes of others.

This shows up everywhere: staying silent in a meeting even when something doesn't make sense, not disagreeing with a friend because we want their approval, avoiding a question in class, or changing what we say at a family gathering because we are worried about how we will be seen.

And there is another uncomfortable question here.

If someone's opinion can decide whether we feel intelligent, respectable, attractive, capable or worthy, haven't we given that person some authority over us?

Someone says, “You're brilliant,” and we accept it. Later, someone says, “You're stupid,” and that also shakes us. If our image of ourselves comes from others, both praise and criticism can control us.

So maybe fear is not simply about the other person.

Perhaps it is about our dependence on what the other person thinks of us.

That raises a question worth observing in everyday life:

Where am I dependent on others for my image of myself, and how much of my fear comes from that dependence ?

Have you read this chapter? If you have, what did you notice?

And if you haven't, does this way of looking at fear change how you see those moments when you hold yourself back ?

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WeekendWithMaster

15th & 16th August,2026

These past two days have been truly transformative, and I only wish I could have stayed longer.

During one of the sessions, Acharya Ji mentioned that if we had our own campus, he would have asked us to stay for a whole month - a thought that had literally just crossed my mind.

Imagine a university where people of all ages and backgrounds come together to learn. The flow of the day would be incredible: spending the morning (9:00 AM to 1:00 PM) in deep role-play, self-reflection, and interactive Q&A sessions; taking the afternoon to explore, hit the gym, play sports, or read; and then ending the day immersed in evening bhajans followed by a wisdom session.

These activities are not just role-plays; they are direct reflections of our lives. It is easy to sit in a chair, listen to a session, and assume we have absorbed enough. But when you step up and participate, your hidden weaknesses, assumptions, and core beliefs become instantly clear.

I realized this firsthand: while I understood the teachings theoretically, expressing them in action during the activities was challenging. On the first day, I was hesitant and held back. By the second day, I began to open up. I noticed that participants who had attended multiple "Weekend with the Master" expressed themselves with complete freedom and confidence.

If you truly want to test how deeply you have understood the teachings, you must experience this yourself.

I urge everyone in the community to attend at least once and experience this life-changing opportunity. You never know when such a chance will come again. When an opportunity like this is right in front of you, grab it.

My deepest gratitude to Acharya Ji for everything. 🙏

Reflection post by Anuradha AP Gita Student

By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, women writers increasingly articulated a direct critique of marriage. Mary Astell’s Some Reflections upon Marriage (1700) questioned why women were expected to submit to husbands and argued that women were often pushed into marriage without meaningful freedom of choice.

Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor, Emma Goldman, and later Simone de Beauvoir all challenged different aspects of marriage: women’s legal dependency, unpaid domestic labor, sexual double standards, economic vulnerability, and the treatment of marriage as women’s primary destiny. Feminist objections have historically focused on the fact that marriage was not simply a private romance but also a legal and economic institution in which women often had fewer rights.

👉 Follow us to learn more about different abuse recovery for women inflicted by a narcissistic world via patriarchy and capitalism.

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A person has a big house, several cars, a high-paying job, impressive degrees, awards, followers, or a growing business and we quickly call them “successful.”

But how do we actually know?

A new chapter from Excellence by Acharya Prashant, “The success stories of ambitious people: Be careful!”, questions something that has become almost normal today: choosing our role models and ambitions from what we see on a screen.

Social media gives us carefully selected pieces of people's lives. We see the achievement, the lifestyle, the celebration, the interview. We rarely see the whole person or know what is happening within.

So what exactly are we admiring?

And what happens when we start measuring our own lives against these images ?

A bigger salary. A better rank. More followers. Another car. Another house. Another promotion. Another milestone.

More and more.

But is “more” necessarily something new ?

Acharya Prashant raises an uncomfortable possibility: perhaps ambition is simply a larger form of desire, and much of what we call ambition comes from old biological and social conditioning. We may believe we are freely choosing our goals while simply repeating what the world has taught us to want.

That makes another question important:

Are our ambitions actually ours?

Before deciding what we want to achieve, perhaps we need to ask who taught us what is worth achieving in the first place.

Have you read Excellence yet, especially this chapter ?

If you have, what did you notice? And if you haven't, what do you think about this question:

How much of what we call “success” is actually our own understanding, and how much have we simply learned to desire from the world around us ?

“Let work be celebration, let work be life.”

~ Acharya Prashant

Sometimes the change is not dramatic.

It can simply look like picking up a brush, learning something new, sitting with a blank canvas, making mistakes and trying again.

Aayushi Sharma shared a few glimpses of her journey in learning art. There is no long explanation, only paintings and a simple “Learning Art.”

Maybe that itself says something.

When learning is no longer limited to exams, degrees or earning a living, it becomes a different way of living. There is curiosity, effort, patience and the willingness to begin as a beginner.

The point of work may not always be the result. Sometimes the work itself becomes the celebration.

A small slice of life, but perhaps a meaningful one.

Reflection by Aayushi Sharma AP Gita Student