u/mamaaearth1

'Acharya Prashant demands honesty over comfort' ~ Book review of Truth Without Apology by Zee News

"Truth Without Apology is not a book for every mood or every reader. It asks for something the self-help genre has largely stopped asking for: not effort, but honesty. In that sense, the title keeps its promise."

Read Full Review: https://zeenews.india.com/industry-updates/book-review-truth-without-apology-acharya-prashant-3067261.html

This is a picture of a hoarder's house.

Hoarding disorder is a recognized mental health condition.

Per psychiatry.org "Acquisition of objects in people who hoard is largely impulsive, with little active planning, and triggered by the sight of an object that could be owned."

The diagnostic criteria includes:

1. Inability to discard possessions

2. Compromised living spaces

3. Significant Life Disruption

If the image above distressed you, made you feel that it was not okay, in fact that it was wrong, helped you understand that the person hoarding needs help, then what about hoarding of wealth and resources by the top 1%? How does that make you feel?

How is it a mark of health to go on hoarding wealth, that you get labeled a billionaire or trillionaire and that is then seen as some sort of achievement, something to celebrate and aspire for?

How is hoarding wealth and natural resources a mark of health?

If only we had a visual representation of the hoarded wealth and natural resources from the planet shared by 8 billion people... but wait, we do.

The climate catastrophe is the visual representation of the aftermath of hoarding, done by hoarders, commonly labeled as "super successful" people, you know, the ones who have made it in life.

The diagnostic criteria for them to be labelled as hoarders, is in fact, met.

1. Inability to discard possessions (continually hoarding and amassing unparalleled wealth and natural resources from the planet)

2. Compromised living spaces (wildfires, heat domes, AMOC collapse, ecosystems collapsing, water scarcity, infertile soil, polluted air, excessive CO2 in the air, the list is only getting longer everyday)

3. Significant Life Disruption (for all human beings and living beings not in the top 1% class, there are going to be millions of climate refugees in the next couple of years)

Acharya Prashant emphasises that the void we are all born with and experience with our waking life, cannot be filled by hoarding any number of external objects (materially or psychologically) The continued attempts to do so without pausing to ever reflect are only a sign of disease.

A disease which needs a cure.

How do you and the people around you perceive it?

References: https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/hoarding-disorder/what-is-hoarding-disorder

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519704/table/ch3.t29/

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260814235845.htm

Define Success ?

Is it external or internal. Before running for something evaluate who is running for that success.

What do you think ?

Recently came across this meme and it got me thinking.

This was one of those "compliments" I received a lot growing up and still do sometimes.

It was also one of the "compliments" I used to "give out" a lot, specially to women.

This was all before Acharya Prashant came into my life.

What used to flatter me and other women and men around me, now for me at least, is a stark reminder of the infantilization of both women and men, specially in India.

What we have, in the name of education is rote learning from textbooks, not holistic development of the individual. The physical, mental, emotional, psychological development are totally neglected. The human being is "prepared" only to serve as a cog in the machine.

As a result, sadly, there are too many children in adult bodies roaming all around us. Making important life decisions that affect everyone.

Learning from life by actually really living it,

Learning from life by actually really participating in it,

Learning from life by actually really playing,

... Just aren't part of our upbringing.

Please don't get me wrong, I am not referring to the childlike innocence that reflects on the faces of the great teachers and masters. The ones who learnt to live with and flow with the rhythm of mother nature as opposed to fighting it constantly just to prove that they exist and that their existence is of utmost importance (check out AP framework to understand more about ego fattening and ego thinning, really fascinating.)

In retrospect, the Santoor soap mom ad where the twist in the ad is that the mother is not recognized as the mother of the child because she appears to be too young, isn't something to celebrate or aspire for... it is actually scary.

While the mother could appear younger than her actual age for various genetic reasons, the ad is for selling a "soap" that "promises" to help women "appear" younger than they actually are.

Why is that so desirable?

Why is that the desire that's invoked in us by majority of the advertisements?

Why is there such little focus on truly empowering individuals, teaching them skills, making them capable of fully participating in their lives and making their own decisions?

Link to AP framework: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/ap-framework

We’ve all heard or sung lines like “Yeh Dil Tum Bin Kahin Lagta Nahin” at some point. It’s usually brushed off as just another classic romantic song about missing someone.

But if you pause and lookcloser, the lyrics actually capture a much deeper, almost tragic human confusion:

“Mohabbat kar toh lein lekin mohabbat raas aaye bhi,

Dilon ko bojh lagte hain kabhi zulfon ke saaye bhi.”

(We try to love, but does love ever truly suit us? Even the comforting shadows of hair start feeling like a heavy burden on the heart.)

What is this really about?

Think about how we live our lives. We constantly run after people, relationships, objects, and worldly attachments, hoping they will finally fix our inner emptiness. We think, "If only I find the right person, if only I am loved enough, my restlessness will vanish."

That is what the song calls mohabbat, our usual, transactional version of love. We cling to things and people not out of real care, but because we are lonely, scared, and looking for a crutch to prop up our false sense of self.

The Heavy Price of False Attachment

Soon enough, reality hits. The very things we held on to for comfort start turning into heavy chains. The relationships we thought would save us become suffocating. Why? Because you cannot cure an inner spiritual void by stuffing it with external objects or people.

When you seek validation or completeness outside yourself, every attachment becomes a burden (bojh). You are carrying the heavy baggage of expectations, insecurities, and constant fear of loss.

The Real Question

The song laments:

“Yeh dil tum bin kahin lagta nahin, hum kya karein?”

(This heart doesn't find peace anywhere without you, what should I do?)

In a worldly sense, "you" means a lover. But looking at it deeply, the missing "you" isn't another person, it is our own true nature. Because we are disconnected from our real self, the mind wanders restlessly from one distraction to another, never finding a home.

True love isn't about clinging to someone to escape your loneliness. It’s about letting go of the false self that feels lonely in the first place. When the illusion drops, the burden lifts.

Has a song ever made you look at your own patterns of attachment this way? Do share your insights or interpretations of these lines!

[PS: Sung By Akanksha]

Link to the article: https://x.com/i/status/2088528557823963567

Happy Independence Day to all Indians today.

As part of the celebrations, may I request that you take out 10 minutes to read this thought provoking and sobering article by Acharya Prashant, a human being who has dedicated his life to the awakening of the people of India as well as the world.

While it is certainly a day of celebration, may we not forget our history, may we not forget all the historical events, in recorded history, which led to the people of our nation being held captive in the first place.

Not once, not twice but multiple times and at the hands of multiple invaders from multiple parts of the world for centuries... what made this possible so many times?

And are we truly free of 'that' today?

Reading the article also opened my eyes to all the ways we, as individuals, as people of India, are still not independent today after gaining Independence as a nation on August 15, 1947.

I will leave you with a quote from the article, which I am going to reflect upon myself.

"On this Independence Day my request is only this: celebrate, but even amid the celebration, let the gaze turn inward for once. The sword that has hung over the country for a thousand years has not lifted yet. The danger is equal, the danger remains, and the cause of that danger is internal. The greatest enemy sits within, not in the house next door but in the very heart, in the very lokdharma. It will not come from outside; it lies in that inner dishonesty which turns from fact, is afraid of the question, walks by fantasy instead of Shruti, invests in ritual in the place of knowledge, and takes pride in keeping half the population locked in the kitchen."

After reading the article, where in your own life or the life of those around you, do you find that they are not really independent? And without independent individuals, can a nation truly be independent?

​

Link to the full video: https://youtu.be/NkMC9IXCRRs?is=rUxiX30kAMLoNLs3

Sharing a quote from the video which resonated deeply with me and I think would resonate with folks here too.

"No, we don't need more action. We are already in the middle of thick action. We need to investigate where our current actions are coming from because we are anyway acting even right now. Where is this action coming from?

Knowing is what is needed.

More acting will not take us anywhere because acting more will happen from the same center whose actions have destroyed the planet. But that's a nice way the actor wants to hide itself.

Who is the actor? The ego. That's a nice way the actor can hide itself by concerning itself with further action, future action, more action, better action, constructive action.

If the actor remains the same, the old destructive one, how can action be constructive? If the actor remains the old primitive one, how can action be new and fresh but the actor desperately wants to avoid that thing that I just mentioned the mirror looking at itself self-knowledge self-observation so the actor will say okay fine there's something missing out there in action with respect to that object so come on you all we need to act we need to act. No, this is such a successful tactic.

You are now even more focused on something outside of yourself, away from yourself with an even more reduced emphasis on who you are because why do I need to look at myself? There is something so very important out there somewhere. I need to fight that down.

The ones who want to begin must begin with an investigation of their own life as it is right now. The choices they are making, the filters they are applying, the ideologies they are holding, the plans that they have, their desires for the future."

Would love to know what was your takeaway from the video?

In this sweet little video, two little children made a mischievous plan to trick their teacher.

They decided to get the same haircut so that their teacher won't be able to tell them apart.

"I am him and he is me..."

The parents decided to play along and in the process learnt an important lesson... hate and prejudice are things that are taught to little children.

A lot of time, energy, resources have to be invested into indoctrinating children and making them believe they are of a superior species or race or ethnicity or gender...

What for really? Do we ever pause to reflect on this?

If raising children in the same manner as we have been doing for centuries actually worked, would the human race and along with is all the other species on the planet, in fact, the planet itself, be in the current state that it is today?

Full of fear, hate, violence, anger, rage, suppressed emotions, perversions of all kinds... destroying each other, killing countless species everyday, destroying the very planet we were born on...

After coming in contact with Acharya Prashant's work, I, in my adulthood got my childlike innocence back... all the distinctions taught to me and enforced on me, began to fall away.

I could begin to live life with a sense of freedom and lightness that everyone should be able to... the same way these little children in the video do. :)

Life, as play... with compassion and love in my heart.

The "jaded adult" can unlearn to be jaded, I learnt this from AP.

Why carry any burden from the past at all?

Why burden any child with the dead weight of the dead past?

Why not learn from these litte children instead?