What you are is what you get

The following excerpt is from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Questioner (Q): Sir, sometimes, outside incidents become so pinching that I feel like running away. But then, again, everything goes alright. These ‘lows’ tremble me. How can the lows be stopped?

Acharya Prashant (AP): Stop the highs.

As far as you are concerned, the lows are real; the highs are an escape. What gets pinched? When do you say that ‘the external situations pinch me and I enter the lows’, what pinches you? The facts pinch you. The reality pinches you. That is what you call as low. For you, the reality is low. Then, surely, for you, some kind of imagination, hallucination, dream-stuff is high. Avoid this ‘high’.

See, how wrongly we put our questions. The question says, “These lows tremble me. How can the lows be stopped?” In fact, you need to live in these lows because these lows are a mirror to you. These lows tell you who you are. Live in these lows. Have the guts.

The problem is not the lows. The problem is that you have found a way to escape from the lows.

You forget what you are. A patient must continuously remember that he is under attack. Remember that he has to avoid a lot of things and he can avoid them only if he remembers that he is a patient. He is not supposed to…