For a long time, I felt disconnected from the world.
Not in a dramatic way. From the outside, everything looked normal. I attended college, talked to people, smiled when expected, and tried to keep up with life like everyone else.
But internally, I was struggling.
I was carrying questions that seemed impossible to answer.
Questions about purpose. Identity. The future. Fear. Why I felt different from the people around me.
While others appeared to be moving confidently toward careers, relationships, and ambitions, I felt trapped inside my own mind. I spent years overthinking, doubting myself, and searching for clarity.
The strange part was that very few people noticed.
During that period, I started writing.
At first, writing wasn’t a hobby or a passion. It was survival.
I filled notebook pages with thoughts I couldn’t explain to anyone. I wrote after emotional breakdowns. I wrote when my mind became too noisy. Sometimes I recorded voice notes because my thoughts were moving faster than I could process them.
Writing became the one place where I could be completely honest.
Then something changed.
I met my guru, Dr. Anand Pradixit Sir.
His teachings didn’t magically solve my problems. They didn’t instantly make me confident, successful, or happy.
What they gave me was awareness.
For the first time, I began observing my thoughts instead of being controlled by them. I started questioning the distractions, expectations, and relationships that were shaping my life.
Eventually, I made a difficult decision.
I left my city and moved to Raipur to learn designing.
I wasn’t driven by confidence. I wasn’t certain about the future. In many ways, I was carrying the same confusion, fear, and self-doubt I had always carried.
But I knew one thing: if I stayed the same, my life would remain the same.
The years that followed became what I now call my monkhood.
Not a spiritual monkhood in the traditional sense.
I didn’t retreat to the mountains. I didn’t abandon society.
My monkhood was psychological.
It was a period of isolation, observation, discipline, self-analysis, and rebuilding. A period of learning how to sit with uncomfortable questions instead of running from them.
Looking back, I realize something important.
Sometimes people disappear from the noise of the world not because they are weak, but because they are trying to understand who they truly are.
Those years changed me.
And the notebooks I filled during that journey eventually became the foundation for a book.
I don’t claim to have all the answers. I am still learning, still growing, and still trying to understand life.
But if there is one thing I learned, it is this:
Self-understanding often begins where external success stops being enough.
Sometimes the most important journey is not toward achievement.
It is toward yourself.
Regards
Hitesh Mandavi