Wish and illusion

What do you wish you could do more every day?

From the Bhagavad Gita: You have the right to action alone, not to its fruits. Never consider yourself the cause of the results, nor be attached to inaction.

The television spoke again.

A shining star rose slowly above a castle, glowing in silence before the words followed—soft, comforting, repeated across generations.

The voice came from the world created by Walt Disney:Wish upon a star… take all your pain, worries, and anxiety away…It played like a loop.

Polished.Perfect.Convincing.

Once, I stood inside that promise.I walked beside my mother through that castle, saw the characters, smiled at their stillness and movement, touched what was once only imagination. I had imagined it long before—and somehow, years later, it happened.A wish fulfilled in 1998.

But now, sitting in front of the same glowing screen, the same words felt different.Empty.

“This is a lie,” I said inside. “Crap.”

Not out of disrespect—but out of realization.

Because no star had ever taken away my pain. No dream had ever removed my anxiety.No repeated sentence had ever stepped into my life and carried my burdens away. It was sold.

Marketed.Repeated until believed.

The television kept playing.But my mind had already left.It walked into the nights.

The nights where something could not be explained.

Since May 2024, there were moments—quiet, heavy, undeniable—where I felt my father.Not memory.Not imagination.Something else.A pull.A disturbance.A calling.

He was in the dementia home then, but what I felt was not a man resting—it was a man searching. Reaching. As if his thoughts were no longer contained in his body, as if they were spilling into spaces unseen.Telepathy.Strange.Illogical.But real to me.

At night, I could feel his cries. Not in sound—but in sensation. A fear that moved without words. A loneliness so deep it did not need language.And slowly, I understood.

He was not just there in that home.He was back in 1953.A boy.An orphan.The moment he lost his parents had returned—not as memory, but as reality inside him.

And now, in that room, he felt abandoned again.As if we had left him.As if no one would come back.And in that state, he reached—not by phone, not by voice—but by something deeper.

Something broken yet powerful.He believed we could hear him.He believed we would come.And I stepped into that.Not through wishing.Through willingness.

I allowed myself to feel everything he felt.The fear.The confusion.The waiting.I followed it day by day, from May 2024 onwards, not knowing where it would lead, but knowing I could not ignore it.

I wrote about it. I observed it. I prepared myself—not with certainty, but with a quiet knowing that his time was closing.I did not know when.Only that it would.

Then, January 2026—He left.Suddenly.No final moment.No warning. All plans stopped. Everything I thought I was preparing for ended without asking me.But Because somewhere along that strange path of feeling and acting—I had already begun letting go.

The book I wrote about him—gone.Removed because I used real names.A mistake.Once, it would have broken me.Now—nothing.No pain.No regret.No attachment.Just release.And then, the house began to change.

His clothes—folded, then given away.His belongings—cleared, piece by piece.The air—lighter.The space—breathing again.Each action was small.

But real.Not a wish.Not a dream.

An act of letting go.Even the Isha practices I followed through the Sadhguru App did not promise me stars or miracles. They did not ask me to wish.They asked me to do.So I did.

Some days unwilling.Some days tired.Some days questioning everything I felt and experienced.Even the telepathy.Even the connection.Even myself.But I continued.

One truth had become clear—A wish is effortless.Action is not.A wish waits.Action moves.A wish is comfort.Action is transformation.

I stopped listening to the star.Stopped believing that something outside would take away what I carried inside.And instead—I acted.

Through confusion.Through resistance.Through silence.

“What do you wish you could do more every day?”

The answer came without hesitation—To act.Even when I don’t want to. Even when I don’t understand. Even when it feels like nothing is happening.Because that is where illusion ends.

And reality begins.

“From the Bhagavad Gita: One who performs their duty without attachment, surrendering all results, is untouched by illusion, like the lotus leaf untouched by water.

Wishing is merely a mirage.

If acted on, it becomes reality.

If not—it remains an illusion.