Self analysis and delusion

If you could be a character from a book or film, who would you be? Why?

From attachment arises desire, from desire anger is born; from anger comes delusion, from delusion loss of memory, and from loss of memory the destruction of intelligence—then one perishes.” — Bhagavad Gita 2.62–63

If I could be a character from a book or film, I would be Arjuna—not the warrior who stood steady, but the one who trembled before the battle.

Because I know that trembling.I stood in the middle of my own battlefield—not of arrows and chariots, but of whispers, smells, sensations, and shadows that felt more real than the ground beneath my feet.

I thought I was being watched, tested, followed by something unseen. A funny smell would enter my space, and I would freeze. A gust of wind would brush against my skin, and I would question its intention.

My body would tighten, my head would ache, my vision would blur—as if the world itself was closing in on me. I became an attention seeker.Not for people.But for myself.Like a cat circling its own reflection, I kept coming back to me—checking, observing, analyzing. Every thought was examined.

Every sensation questioned. Every fear entertained. I told myself stories of malicious spirits, unseen forces, athma, energies trying to disturb my peace. And I believed them long enough for them to become my reality.

It was a strange experiment.A rotten one, I would call it.Because the more I observed, the more I created. The more I created, the more I feared.And the more I feared, the more I tightened—my body, my breath, my mind.

Yet, somewhere in between all this chaos, I also changed.

I stopped biting my nails.

I stopped scratching my skin until it broke.

I reduced my coffee from twenty-one cups to one… sometimes none.

I stopped hurting my eyes with my own hands and began washing them gently with water, treating them as something fragile, something worth protecting.

These were not small victories.

They were silent revolutions.

On some days, I turned to Sadhguru’s Isha practices—not as a solution, but as a pause. A way to sit. A way to breathe. A way to create a small island of stillness in a storm I did not yet understand.

On other days, I did nothing.I simply sat.Like a part-time yogi, without discipline, without mastery—just sitting with whatever came. Thoughts, fears, smells, sensations… letting them pass like strangers on a road I no longer chased.

Slowly, something shifted.The malicious spirits did not leave.They changed.They became quieter.

Then doubtful.

Then… familiar.

And one day, I saw them clearly.They were mine.My doubts.My fears.My imagination stretched too far, fed too often, believed too deeply.

The destructive world I feared was not outside—it was a story I had written so well that I forgot I was the author.

I laughed.

Not because it was funny.But because I had been both the ghost and the one running from it.So I continue.Still observing.Still changing.Still seeking attention—not from the world, but from within.Not to prove my worth…But to understand it.

Like Arjuna before the battle, I am still standing in the middle—confused, questioning, uncertain.But at least now, I know this:The battlefield is within me.And so is the way out.

“Let a man lift himself by himself; let him not degrade himself. For the self alone is the friend of the self, and the self alone is the enemy of the self.” — Bhagavad Gita 6.5