Acharya Prashant advises against living a life of cowering, shrinking, and sobbing. He suggests one should live in such a way that even if everything is taken away, one is not affected beyond a certain limit. He uses the analogy of eating a sweet when it's available but not getting addicted to it. The core principle is: "What is mine cannot be taken away. What is not mine was never mine to begin with. In either situation, why should I cry?" One should not live on what is given by others, neither on their charity nor on their loans. He emphasizes that our lives should have the resonance of our own being. He says, "I am eating from my own father's, not from anyone else's father's." He clarifies that he has only one father, pointing either upwards (to God) or inwards (to the Self). He humorously compares this to the movie dialogue, "Do you know who my father is?" Addressing the questioner's fear of rising and falling, he explains that fear demands security and control. People who are "control freaks" are very afraid of the unexpected, the uncalculated, and the unpredictable. However, no matter how much one calculates, what happens in life will be different. He gives the example of Mahatma Buddha's father, who tried immensely to control his son's life to prevent him from leaving, but failed. Acharya Prashant advises knowing what is impermanent and what is permanent. One should give their life, heart, and soul to that which can last. The process to find this is "Neti-Neti" (not this, not this), by withdrawing one's life from all that is transient. Once you have the inner armor of discrimination, you don't need hundreds of external armors. Then you can live and play freely and fearlessly. He concludes by quoting Kabir Saheb: "One day it will happen that no one will belong to anyone. What to say of the woman of the house, the pulse of the body itself will leave." and "When desire is gone, worry is gone, the mind becomes carefree. Those who want nothing are the kings of kings." He also quotes, "The doctor died, the patient died, the whole world died. Only Kabir did not die, for whom Ram is the support." He explains that all our worries, insecurities, and fears are due to selfishness, which is rooted in the illusion of incompleteness.
