Discovery

I was thinking about your mom’s philosophy of Sankalp—the idea of choosing a path and holding to it with devotion. For a long time, I felt like a misfit because commitment never came easily to me.

After meeting Satyaji, I realized there’s another way—my way. Not refusing choice, but not binding every moment to an outcome either. To think, to simply be, and let life either carry me toward something or gently shift my course. Both ways are enough.

Fasting is revealing the clearest form of that being. I’m three days in, and the practice is already showing me small, honest fragments of who I am. At first it brings a quiet emptiness, then a voice—my mind whispering weakness, bargaining, or pride. I notice those stories without engaging them. I ask my body what it needs, and I listen. Sometimes the answer is rest, sometimes patience, sometimes a quiet recognition that strength can be soft.

Each fast feels like a mirror, a map. It reveals where craving tightens, where compassion softens, and where steadiness grows when I stop wrestling with thought. The mind will always play its games; the body keeps a steadier counsel. Following that counsel, I discover a calm resilience, a clarity born from attending rather than forcing.

So I keep the fasts not as strain or duty, but as a slow, tender practice of learning myself. Day by day, breath by breath, I return to listening—and in that listening, I find a gentler, more awake way to move through life.

This October, for Navratri, I plan to observe fasts for all nine days, with one meal each day of fruits and milk products.

And I wanted to tell you this because talking about your mom’s Sankalp just a couple of hours ago made me realize all this in real time—it feels like a little journey I’m starting, and it feels good to share it with someone who really understands.