Your Family’s Resistance is a Gift
Seeker: I’m committed to my spiritual growth, but my friends and family don’t seem to understand or support this spiritual part of me. How do I deal with their lack of support without feeling resentful?
Rajiv: Isn’t the very desire for their understanding an echo of the same pattern you wish to dissolve within yourself? This yearning is no different from any other desire—only now, it’s cloaked in the guise of “family support.”
You’ve chosen the inward path, a quiet rebellion against the ego, against the conditioning that demands safety in approval. And yet, you are still searching for that safety within the familiar. The truth is, no one in your family needs to understand you. Not one friend needs to nod in agreement with your spiritual explorations. Their validation is not your path.
Seeker: I agree. This longing for approval is no different from other attachments I’ve worked to dissolve. But what about the isolation that arises? I can’t escape the feeling of loneliness.
Rajiv: The Buddha didn’t wait for the world to understand him before he realized the truth. When you feel unseen, that is an invitation to drop deeper into your true nature that needs no validation. When you feel lonely, that is your teacher speaking to you. It is only when you no longer resist this solitude that the true companion, your own boundless presence, steps forth. Do you see how each moment of discomfort can be the path? Your family’s resistance is a gift, though it may not feel like one.
Seeker: So the feelings of resistance and isolation are a gift? This is an incredible new way of seeing it!
Rajiv: Yes, if they were supportive, perhaps you would become complacent, thinking that external alignment is enough. But this path doesn’t allow for such comfort. You must find peace beyond their understanding. Their lack of support is pushing you to recognize the only true support, the one within.
Let the world misunderstand you. Let your friends and family continue their own journeys, even if it’s not toward the same horizon. Your path is yours, and it leads to the vastness beyond loneliness. You will find that, in truth, you are not alone, you never were. You are the ocean in which all these waves of support and rejection, family and friends, arise and dissolve. That vastness is beyond any support the world could ever offer you.
The Changing Landscape of Friendship
Seeker: My newfound spirituality is seriously affecting my social life. In the past, a long weekend meant spending time with friends or socializing over dinners. But now I feel that socializing with people who are not spiritual is exhausting. Their conversations about the latest car or celebrity divorce feels totally meaningless. Even when I do go out with my friends, I struggle to engage with them and they notice it.
Rajiv: This is a natural part of the spiritual journey. As your inner world deepens, the things that once interested you start feeling shallow and draining. It’s not that your friends have changed, but that your relationship with the world is undergoing a shift.
If you continue down this path, some of your friends will drift away, or you may find yourself naturally distancing from them. This isn’t something to feel guilty or anxious about. It’s simply the unfolding of your journey. You’re growing in ways that they might not yet understand.
But let me offer a word of caution: don’t completely shut yourself off from your old connections. While your interest in their world may have waned, relationships are still a mirror. They show you where you’re holding on to subtle judgments and creating separations in your heart. Can you still meet them with love, even if you don’t resonate with their ways?
Spirituality doesn’t mean rejecting the world, it means transforming how you relate to it. You may not enjoy the same conversations anymore, but you can bring your deeper presence and wisdom into those encounters. And if certain friendships naturally fade, let them go with grace.
Seeker: Should I just accept this disconnection as inevitable?
Rajiv: Disconnection and connection are just two sides of the same egoic coin. In truth, you are not disconnected from anyone. When the old relationships fade, a space opens up. But the mind fears this space and rushes to fill it with nostalgia and the desire to return to what is gone. You want to reconnect because the mind is uncomfortable with the void.
Seeker: But I feel so alone.
Rajiv: This feeling of being alone is an invitation to go deeper. What if instead of grasping for connection, you simply rested in this void, without trying to escape it?
When you stop trying to fill the void, something beautiful happens. You start to see people as they are, not as you want them to be. You engage without needing validation. Then, a different kind of connection arises. A silent and deep connection that doesn’t rely on validation.
In reality, what you are truly seeking is a connection with your own true nature, the vastness that lies beyond the stories of relationships.
Seeker: I intellectually understand what you are saying, but isn’t it natural to want companionship?
Rajiv: What kind of companionship are you seeking? Are you seeking companionship to fill a void and avoid facing yourself? You feel you need others to escape this feeling, but you’re mistaken. First, find your true companion in silence, in the spacious awareness that is always here. Only then, will companionship with others be without conflict and bitterness.
Egoic Needs in a Relationship
Seeker: J. Krishnamurti once said that family is a very ugly affair, and I now understand why. These last three weeks have been an endless war with my partner. Small arguments turn into battles and silence becomes a weapon. There are moments when I wonder if we are even speaking the same language anymore, or if we are just two people trapped in our own hurt, unable to meet each other.
Rajiv: It’s not the relationship that’s inherently ugly, but the desires we project onto it. The core of the conflict is not the relationship itself, but the expectations and identities we bring into it. We enter relationships carrying our conditioning, fears, insecurities, and desires. We expect the other person to fulfill those desires and to heal those wounds. When those expectations are not met, conflict arises.
Krishnamurti speaks about this ugliness because relationships often mirror the ego’s workings in their rawest form. It can be heartbreaking, but it is also an opportunity. Instead of seeing the relationship as a battleground, can you use it as a path to understanding? Each argument, each hurtful word exchanged, reveals something about the ego’s strategies. It shows where you’re clinging and where you’re seeking validation.
Seeker: That makes sense, but in the heat of the moment all the wisdom disappears and anger takes over. In those moments, I don’t see a mirror. I just see someone who is hurting me. How do I remember this understanding when I am drowning in emotion?
Rajiv: You are right. When pain arises, it does not come as a quiet whisper. It arrives as a storm. And in that storm, all you want is relief; sometimes through attack and sometimes through withdrawal.
Next time when conflict arises, don’t try to force yourself to be calm or wise. Instead, be fully present with the reaction itself. Watch the hurt and the anger without immediately moving into blame or defense. When you do this, the storm may still rage, but you are no longer lost in it.
Seeker: But if I stop reacting, if I no longer engage in the fight, won’t that make me distant? If I detach too much, won’t I lose the connection?
Rajiv: Right now, your love is entangled with your needs. You love, but you also seek something in return in the form of validation and understanding. And when those are denied, love turns into resentment. Is it possible to love without these endless demands?
When love is no longer tied to the ego’s needs, it becomes vast, untouched by conflict. It becomes a presence, not a transaction. And in that space, real connection can arise.
Seeker: That sounds beautiful, but it feels so far from where I am. Right now, love still feels complicated. How do I actually start to untangle all of this?
Rajiv: You start by watching. The next time an argument arises, pause. Not to suppress your emotions, but to witness them. Feel the anger and the need to defend yourself, but don’t act on it immediately. Watch the mind create its stories: “They don’t respect me. They don’t care about me. I always have to fight to be understood.” See how quickly these thoughts come and fuel the fire.
When you start to see the pattern, something in you begins to loosen. You realize you don’t have to follow the mind’s stories. You don’t have to engage in the same cycle over and over again.
When it is free from control, love naturally finds its own way. It either deepens or it dissolves. But in either case, you are no longer bound by it.
Seeker: So, if I truly let go of control, the relationship may change in ways I don’t expect and maybe even end. That scares me.
Rajiv: Yes, and that fear is exactly why we hold on so tightly. We cling because we are afraid of loss. If a relationship can only survive through control, is it truly alive? Or is it just a structure we maintain out of fear?
Letting go does not mean the relationship must end. It simply means you stop forcing it to be something it is not. You allow it to evolve and breathe. And in that space, you will find something that is deeper than control, something which is real.
The First Step Isn’t Forgiveness, It’s Honesty
Seeker: I’ve been deeply hurt by my partner. We were together for 15 years, and then she cheated on me. Letting go of the resentment feels impossible. How can spirituality help me find forgiveness when my heart still feels wounded?
Rajiv: Spirituality meets you not in some distant future where you have transcended resentment, but right here, in the heart of your pain. Before any talk of forgiveness, before any movement toward healing, you must first accept exactly where you are. Just begin by meeting this moment as it is, with all its pain and suffering.
Seeker: How do I do this?
Rajiv: You stop looking for a way out. You let the ache speak in its own language. You let the betrayal echo through your being without immediately trying to fix your emotions.
Watch what the mind wants to do. It wants to blame. It wants to justify. It wants to hold on to the identity of the wounded one. But beneath them, something quieter waits.
You will begin to notice that there is a presence in you that has the courage to be with this pain. This awareness, this space of being, is who you truly are. It is vast, unchanging, and untouched by the actions of others. The ego insists that you are the pain. But in stillness, you come to see that these are passing clouds in the sky of consciousness.
Standing in the Heart of Sorrow
Seeker: The loss of my child has left me devastated, and nothing seems to help with the pain. Is there any way to make sense of this tragedy?
Rajiv: The loss of a child is one of the deepest pains the human heart can experience. For a parent, there are no words or philosophy that can intellectualize it away. You are standing in the heart of sorrow, where life has torn open your very being.
True spirituality does not seek to bypass your pain or offer hollow comfort. There is no “right” way to respond to your loss. There is no spiritual ideal that demands you transcend your grief or find immediate peace in the face of this tragedy. The wound is too fresh and the sorrow too raw. Grief is not something to be pushed away or even “healed” in the sense that modern culture often speaks of healing. It is a force that must be honored and allowed its own time to unfold.
Don’t deny your grief or try to “let go” of it prematurely. Quite the opposite: spirituality begins with radical acceptance of “what is,” and right now “what is” is your deep pain. The spiritual path invites you to be fully with your experience of it. It calls you deeper, into the very center of your grief; not to fix it, but to open to it fully. Because within that openness, a different kind of healing begins to emerge, one that the mind cannot grasp, but the heart can sense.
This is not an easy path; it is a path of sitting with the unbearable, allowing it to unfold and exist within you. You feel as though your heart has been broken into pieces, and I am not asking you to glue those pieces back together right away. Instead, sit with the shattered remains, let the pain have its place in your heart and allow this brokenness to be part of your experience.
Your child was not simply an individual being who came and left too soon. Your child was an expression of the same universal consciousness, a wave in the ocean of life that rose and fell. Though the wave has returned to the ocean, the ocean remains.
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