u/vini-within

We often listen to soulful tracks like “Main Yahaan Hoon” as just another romantic movie song. But if you strip away the Bollywood lens, these lines actually capture something profound about our inner conflict:
“Main tumhare hi dil ki toh aawaaz hoon...”
(I am nothing but the voice of your own heart...)

*The Voice We Run From*

We spend our days running outwards, chasing people, distractions, and achievements to feel complete. Yet, a quiet restlessness always lingers inside. We wonder why we feel empty even when we have everything.

The truth is, that persistent emptiness isn't an enemy, it is the voice of our own deeper consciousness trying to break through the noise of our daily chos. It is the part of us that knows our lifestyle of endless craving is a trap.

*Breaking Down Our Walls*

The song says:
“Kaisi sarhadein, kaisi majbooriyan...”
(What boundaries, what helplessness...)

We build heavy walls around ourselves, fear, social conditioning, and petty attachments, creating a false sense of a separate "self." We think protecting this brings security, but it only isolates us, making us feel imprisoned.

*Coming Home*

The constant refrain, “Main yahaan hoon” (I am right here), is a reminder that peace isn't a distant destination. It isn't locked behind external conditions or someone else's validation. It is already here, buried right beneath our restless thoughts and superficial desires.

When you stop running outward and finally face yourself, the walls crumble. The struggle ends, and you realize that what you were searching for outside was within you all along.

Has a simple song ever made you realize how much unnecessary chaos you create for yourself? Let's discuss it in the comments!

[PS: Posted by Akanksha]

Forgive the poor cameraman work

I’ve always wanted to learn swimming, but somehow, for the longest time, I kept finding reasons not to. The water, the unknown, the whole “what if I can’t do it?” thing, even being too conscious of my body and whether I’d actually be able to manage in the water. Fear was doing what fear does best.

My mind had already created so many reasons and scenarios to stay away before I had even taken the first step. Somewhere along the way, while reading Acharya Prashant’s book “Fear” and listening to his teachings, I started seeing this differently. The fear isn’t really in the act, it is in thinking about the act. We imagine, anticipate and suffer through things that haven’t even happened. The book also made me question how much of this comes from the way we know ourselves through others, through their eyes, opinions and approval.

And then, well… long story short, I stopped overthinking, got into the water… and I swam. 🏊🏽‍♀️🏊🏽‍♀️🏊🏽‍♀️

After about 2 months of practice, I can now do freestyle and backstroke. 😄🙌🏼

Wait, I forgot to add one thing: Fearlessly!! 😄

https://www.the-sun.com/news/16755156/man-builds-realistic-mini-greek-village-garden/

I was watching this video of Steve Irwin, where he passionately shares his utopian vision of a world with protected wildlife, vast wilderness, pure oceans, and water clean enough to drink straight from a creek. His love for nature is unmistakable, and the work he did was extraordinary!! 💯

Yet, knowing that he wasn’t a vegan left me with a strange dissonance. This isn’t to diminish his contribution or disrespect his legacy, but it made me question what it really means to love animals.

I’m not saying everyone who loves animals is being hypocritical, or that caring for our pets and wildlife is somehow meaningless. But the dissonance feels hard to ignore. We can love one animal who’s our pet so deeply, call it our family, protect another, and still eat a third without giving it much thought?

When the lines of our compassion are drawn so selectively, it makes me wonder what exactly determines who gets our love and who becomes our food.

If our compassion is so selective, can we really call it compassion ❓❓❓❓

[supprimé]

Happy Independence Day! ❤️🇮🇳

There’s something about Independence Day that always makes me think of the people whose courage made our freedom possible. 🇮🇳

Since childhood, “Bhagat Singh” has been someone I’ve deeply admired. His courage, clarity, and complete commitment to what he believed in have always inspired me. This talk on Bhagat Singh by Acharya Prashant made me pause and think about freedom beyond its usual meaning.

👉**🏼What does freedom mean to you today? And what are you doing with the fre**edom you have? 🇮🇳

🎥 https://youtu.be/ryT5_UhNtbw?si=rrrQEEDi3-uqEhhS

Share your answers in comments below. 👇🏼 👇🏼

India Became Independent. But Did We?

As India gets ready to celebrate its 80th Independence Day, there is one question that can easily get lost beneath the flags, speeches and celebrations.

👉🏼What does it really mean to be independent?

Political freedom is one thing. But what about the freedom to think clearly, question what we have inherited and not be driven by fear or conditioning? Acharya Prashant takes this question further in this latest podcast. He looks at our history not just to remember that India was once under foreign rule, but to understand what made that possible in the first place. And more importantly, whether the weaknesses that made us vulnerable have really disappeared.

It is a thought-provoking way to look at Independence Day, not just as a celebration of what we gained in 1947, but as a chance to look at the freedom we actually live with today.

Absolutely worth giving the full podcast a listen. Do share your thoughts in comments section on what freedom means to you.

Check it out ⤵️:

https://youtu.be/PMGHP-802pk?si=b0vVTu62imNloMzE

Picture this! ⤵️

“There’s a 12-year-old girl getting her first period. Maybe nobody really explained it to her. Maybe she knows the word, but not what it actually means. Then one day it happens at school. There is blood on her clothes, she is frightened, people notice, some students laughs, someone whispers, some even take pics. And suddenly something that her body is supposed to do naturally.. turns into something she feels she has to hide.” Do you find this part really disturbing? Does it make you wonder how much we can shame a little girl for something so natural? We don’t just leave girls uninformed about their bodies. We teach them, directly or indirectly, to feel embarrassed by them. Can you wrap your head around this? I can’t!

And then.. the effects of all this shame and turmoil can obviously disturb her academic life. And then maybe her entire life too? All for what? Just something natural!

UNICEF reports that about one in four schoolgirls in India has taken time off during menstruation, with inadequate toilets and lack of sanitary products among the reasons. And for girls in rural areas, the situation can be even more harder, where access to toilets, water, sanitary products and basic information is often limited. A study of 600 adolescent girls across six government schools in Delhi found that 40.8% had missed school during menstruation. Among those who stayed away, 21.6% specifically cited embarrassment, while fear of staining, lack of privacy, inadequate water and pain were also reported. These numbers don’t tell the whole story, but they make one thing difficult to ignore……..a girl shouldn’t have to drop out of school or miss a day in the classroom because we couldn’t make it normal for her to manage her period openly and with dignity.

Couple of days back, I came across this short clip by Acharya Prashant on period shame, and it made me look at the whole thing a little differently, well.. actually quite differently!! A completely ordinary process of the body has somehow become something that girls are taught to hide. He brings it back to something very basic..asking us to look at what is actually happening, instead of blindly carrying the stories society has attached to it. The bleeding itself isn’t the shame. The shame is something we have added to it. And when that idea is passed from one generation to another…a young girl ends up carrying a burden that her body never asked her to carry. We don’t need to teach girls to feel less ashamed. We need to stop giving them reasons to feel ashamed in the first place.

I don’t have anything else to say, nor any questions to ask, just leaving you with this thought.. Can we just stop teaching girls to be ashamed of their own bodies. Period.

_____________________

Sources:

https://www.unicef.org/india/what-we-do/clean-india-clean-schools

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6130156/

https://www.unicef.org/india/reports/menstrual-hygiene-management-schools-south-asia

When you look back at childhood comic strips, they seem to make so much more sense than they did when you first read them. There is something profoundly beautiful about the way a child receives the world. 😊

One person makes a gentle, philosophical remark about time and mortality… how we won’t be around to see a small tree grow. It is the kind of statement that carries the weight of experience, the quiet and humble acceptance of a limited lifespan.

The other hears something entirely different. He hears a logistical announcement. “Where are we going?”

This is the mind before the ego has fully taken over. The ego loves to make everything about itself. It personalizes. It assumes every statement is a reference to its own journey. But here, there is no such assumption. There is no anxiety… only curiosity. The listener simply receives.
When we look back at such moments as adults, they make a different kind of sense. They remind us of a time when we were not yet the center of our own universe. The child’s mind is porous, unguarded. It does not immediately filter everything through “What does this mean for ME?”

As we grow older, the ego thickens. Every conversation becomes a mirror. Every statement is scanned for hidden implications about our worth, our future, our security. We lose the ability to hear things as they are. We are always adding “ME ME ME ME !!!” to the equation.

If you observe carefully, this interaction is a beautiful teaching ~ Innocence is the capacity to let the world be what it is, without immediately making it about you. And perhaps, in looking back, we are being invited to return to that state… even just for a moment… and simply observe a tree, a comment, and maybe our life, without asking, “Where are we going?”

Have you ever picked up The Little Prince? 📖

You can almost always find it tucked away in the kids’ section of a bookstore. But this is one of those books that is as much for adults as it is for children, maybe even more so in some ways.

I read it a while ago, and I remember finishing it with a lot of questions. There was something about the simplicity of the story that made me wonder about love, attachment, relationships and why we, as adults, manage to make such simple things so complicated.

Then as it happened recently, I came across Acharya Prashant’s discussion on the book, and it made me look at the whole story very differently.

He goes much deeper than the usual interpretation of The Little Prince. What looks like a simple story starts becoming a reflection on how we live, what we get attached to, how we understand love, and the different ways the ego keeps us occupied.
What really caught my attention was his take on ‘’Love’’. How often do we call something love when there is actually possession, expectation or attachment underneath it? And what would love look like without all of that?

He also talks about something as simple as sincerity, but in a way that made me stop and think. Not innocence or childishness, but the ability to look at ourselves honestly without constantly explaining ourselves away.

I found the whole discussion surprisingly moving, especially because it made a book I thought I knew feel completely different!

Sharing the video here. It’s a beautiful one to watch, even if you haven’t picked up The Little Prince before.

🔗 https://youtu.be/iBHeVnaxJxg?si=UCoiQxrAEHWlJ9J-

Please attempt. I am eager to see replies.