Ask Deepak

You say that we should concentrate on our present actions and not get emotionally attached to the result. Then how should we plan our future? When we set our goals, we’re generally expecting things to turn out it a certain manner. Isn’t it how we plan our lives? How do we detach ourselves from the outcome and yet find the strength and motivation to take action towards our goal?

Ever since I’ve started meditating, my mind is muddled with questions regarding my life, my aim, my existence and so many things. Is it because of something new taking place inside me or is it because of a social conditioning that we begin to look for such answers whenever we think of meditation and spirituality. Why are there only questions? How do we get the answers? Is it just the beginning?

My relationship with my mother has become very strained. Though I consciously make an effort not to do or say anything that in any way gives her a chance to stir me. I have a feeling that I can’t love her any more even though she is my mother. I try to forgive and forget but she finds ways to upset me and out there to get me somehow. Is it something in my energy that’s creating all this? How do I take the responsibility of these circumstances and her behavior towards me? Please guide how do I calm her, my circumstances or so become so strong that her comments, her actions don’t disturb me. (The question is small but I hope u understand that intensity of this matter. My heart bleeds because of her words and actions and also no sitting together and solving issues helped. Everything falls back to square one.

I feel like I am trapped in my own mind and I’ll explain you why. Since 2008, I started to develop this pity feeling about people in general, specially people who have no opportunities in life, who live on the streets, who go to jail, who live in the “favelas” (I live in Brazil), who work in simple jobs, like cleaning, for instance. I feel like they have no reason to live because life doesn’t get any better to the majority of them. I also feel sorry because people are not concerned about changing themselves, how they are and how the world is. I feel deeply sorry for people who suffer, either because of poverty, of sickness, of wars, of drugs. I know that I am wrong and I shouldn’t feel sorry for anyone, not even for myself. I know that everybody is where its conscious is and that their lives, like my own, are a reflect of their own evolution stage (if I can call it like that). I know all that, but I can’t refrain myself from feeling this way. You see, I know one thing, but I feel another, that is why I feel like I am trapped in my own mind and I don’t know that answer for this. I just don’t want to feel sorry for anyone because that is really bothering me and making me depress… I would like you to help with this…

I’ll try to speak good English, I’m from Holland, 24 years old and read your books with much joy. But this dilemma keeps me busy:

A caterpillar makes a cocoon and naturally transforms into a butterfly. If he would fight against the fact of being a caterpillar and make his own wings out of leafs or be depressed or in any other way distrust any force of nature, he wouldn’t ever make a cocoon. But on the other hand when he would deny his limitations as being a caterpillar and would pretend to be just as free as all butterflies he would never desire progression and so never make a cocoon either.

So now my question is; as being a human .. where is the border of acceptance and taking action?

I am 37 years old and is doing pretty well in life. I consider myself well rounded, kind hearted and with a great spirit. For the last 5 years I have been praying for the gift of a companion and a family. Most of my relationships have been long term but filled with fear of commitment from the other party and then I usually walk away because I feel like I am wasting my time. Of late I am filled with a feeling of sadness as I get older. How can I find peace and find a lifelong partner who is willing to commit?

The real problem is that I can’t seem to identify the singular reason for me feeling so out of sorts. I’m twenty years old, recently graduated from a top school with honors…and am new to a job right now that I don’t think I can ever learn to love. I’ve had a history of reacting really badly to stress during my thesis year; I almost dropped all my subjects because I was overly anxious with doing my best–and I always tend to overexert myself because I always believe that if you’re capable of performing a certain task, you can always perform the task one notch higher. I’ve grown up to love the Medical Arts…but for one reason or another, I was only able to take a liberal arts degree, instead of pursuing a field that I believe, is founded upon the pillars of helping others–the very core of which is love and compassion–something I’ve always believed that people shouldn’t deprive other people of. At heart, I am a very passionate and direct person–I work myself to the bone when I can and always try to figure out solutions and add options to existing choices and be a kinetic spirit always on the move. It only seriously bothers me that I only recently developed asthma and have panic attacks–my father was also diagnosed with chronic depression before he died. my mother has hypertension and as an only daughter, I fear too much at the present, more so whatever it might be that lurks in the future. I haven’t always been like this–but I tend to cower–I feel oppressed, mightily insecure and small when I can’t help people–when I tend to sit down too long and doubt my value and worth as a person. It irks me that I’m paid to work…but I have no passion for my job at all. My mother compelled me to work at where I am at the moment–I’m wishing I could just leave and pursue fields which i really want, one of which includes getting a masters either in linguistics or in psychology. As an only child–after living for four years in the city–I’m back, living with my mother in her home town–I didn’t grow up here, and as such, I feel caged within this place. i hate being static, being without initiative, following people who prefer to take it easy–I just can’t! I’m a control freak and I need to almost always be busy with something challenging and compelling to make me feel alive, that I’m actually more than a waste of space and wages in the office and in other people’s lives in general.
Problem is, I can’t just go out and pursue what I want without taking into consideration what my mother wants–she needs me too much, being the only other person surviving in our family–she explained that she was only too glad that I was back home–her sadness and vulnerability grieve me to no end. Starting her 50s soon, I know what sorts of medical tests and specialist interventions she needs in her life–I am frustrated at earning too little, feeling like I am wasting my time trying–I am worried that by the time that I do earn enough for her physical, psychological and emotional needs, I’ll be too much of a wreck to be of use to anybody, much less to my mother that needs me; I virtually feel alone most of the time and am only able to get by when I have pleasant intellectual distractions. Sometimes, I feel suicidal, wishing my asthma would just engulf me and take me away–sometimes, happy too, but ever since work, lazy and unfocused, undriven and angry, relishing hate, although I too feel afraid for thinking and feeling too strongly. I am not at all comfortable with the fact that I need to write for a living–I love the written word too much to distort its beauty. Please, if you can find it in your heart to give me advice and any counsel as you see fit, I would very much appreciate it, knowing that you are both a medical doctor and a compassionate man at heart. Many thanks

I am 23 and in a relationship with a boy for the past six months. We love each other very much and given time we want to see our relationship through to marriage. The catch is that he is Catholic and I am Hindu and while his parents are fine with us being together my father is against an inter faith/ caste marriage and wants me to have an arranged marriage… My father is a single parent and says I will hurt him if I continue this relationship. I do not want to hurt my father but I also love my partner. Is it wrong that I want to continue seeing him and hope to convince my father eventually?

I am 16 years old male who grew up in a household with a bipolar alcoholic father. He left when I was 12 but he would come back some nights to scream at me and my mother and then I ended up in and out of mental hospitals for a time for wanting to take my own life at age 13 but I have made a great recovery over the past years but recently my father has been sending me abusive messages and he says that our relationship is over but I feel there is still hope so how do I go about dealing with him while I try to further my own recovery?