The Life Of Dostoevsky
Fyodor Dostoevsky was a Russian writer, and his books go very deep into human nature. They are not light stories. They deal with things like doubt, guilt, suffering, and the reasons people act the way they do.
He did not start out as a writer straight away. He was interested in literature, but he went to Saint Petersburg, one of the biggest cities in Russia, and studied engineering for the army. He did that because it was a stable and respected path. But he did not enjoy it. Writing was what he really wanted to do. So he began spending time with people who liked discussing ideas and questioning society. They were asking why there was so much injustice and inequality in people’s lives. At that time, Russia was ruled by Tsar Nicholas I, and even reading certain books or gathering to talk about ideas was not allowed. Just discussing and questioning things could get you into serious trouble.
Eventually, Dostoevsky and his friends were arrested. They were accused of political crimes and sentenced to death. They spent months in prison waiting for execution. One day they were taken out, lined up, and the execution process began. When it was almost Dostoevsky’s turn, the order was suddenly stopped. The Tsar had changed the sentence. Instead of being executed, they were sent to Siberia.
Siberia was extremely harsh. Dostoevsky spent years there among criminals, murderers, and thieves. He himself was not a criminal. His only crime was questioning the system and thinking differently. He was sick for much of that time and lived under very difficult conditions.
But during those years, he closely observed the people around him. He watched how they thought, how they justified their actions, how they dealt with guilt, fear, and suffering. This experience gave him a deep understanding of human psychology.
Later, this showed up in his writing. One of his most famous books, Crime and Punishment, reflects much of what he saw and understood during his imprisonment. It explores why people commit crimes, how they live with their conscience, and how suffering affects the human mind.
After finishing his sentence, he returned to his city and continued writing. The reason I am talking about him is not just because he was a great writer, but because of what his life shows us. Dostoevsky shows that a person can be full of doubt and still be searching for truth. Someone can go through failure, hardship, and suffering and still grow from it. Many of the questions he raised about human nature still do not have clear answers, even today.
Sometimes when life feels difficult or unfair, there is something to learn from it. Patience and endurance can slowly change a person. Real growth usually does not come from comfort. It comes from struggle and questioning.
Nothing Changes Until We Change
Life has a hard way of teaching us the truth, and it tries to teach us repeatedly until we realise it. Nothing changes until we change.
Your life is not a reflection of your hopes. It is a reflection of your habits. When you look back honestly, you begin to see that most people are not deeply invested in your struggle. They might listen politely. They might nod. But in the end, people judge results, not effort. They see outcomes, not sleepless nights. That’s just reality.
And if we are honest, the biggest enemy we face is not failure. It is our own mind. The mind destroys more dreams than failure ever could. Anxiety. Indecision. Overthinking. All of it quietly convinces us to wait, to hesitate, to play small. Dreams do not die loudly. They fade while we are thinking about them.
But the slowest and most dangerous killer of all is comfort. Comfort destroys potential. Silently. It pretends to be safety. It feels warm and familiar, and it whispers that this is enough. Many people believe being comfortable means being secure, but comfort often means you have stopped growing. You feel safe, but you are not moving. And a life that does not move slowly shrinks.
We must remember this. We are responsible for our own lives. No one else. Not our parents. Not our circumstances. Not the past. Responsibility is power. The moment you take ownership, you take control.
Excuses feel protective, but they only protect our limitations. They never protect our future. Every excuse builds a wall around what we think we cannot do. And futures do not grow behind walls.
If you want a different life, you need different habits. Different decisions. Different standards for yourself. Change does not start when the world changes. It starts when you do.
And that choice is always yours.
Do Not Fall In Love With The World
A son once told his father that he had fallen in love with a girl whom he wanted to marry and asked him to go and speak to her family. The father agreed and went to see the girl.
When the father met her, he fell in love with her himself. When he returned home, he told his son that the girl was more suitable for him than for the son. This led to an argument between them, and the family became divided and unhappy.
Not knowing how to resolve the situation, they decided to visit a wise man in their community, known for giving fair advice. They explained the problem and asked him to judge who should marry the girl. When the wise man met her, he also fell in love with her and said that she was more suitable for him than for either the father or the son.
Angry and confused, they decided to take the matter to someone with more authority. They went to the vizier, a high official close to the king. The vizier saw the girl, and also fell in love with her, saying she should marry him instead.
Finally, they went to the king himself. When the king saw the girl, he too fell in love and wanted to marry her, and said she was more suitable for him than for anyone else.
At this point, the girl spoke. She suggested a test. She said she would run, and whoever caught her could marry her. She began to run, and all of them ran after her. While chasing her, they fell into a deep pit and could not get out.
Standing above them, the girl told them that her name was World. She explained that they were always chasing her, thinking they could possess her, but instead they only harmed themselves by doing so.
This story shows how people at every level of life can become attached to worldly desires. Age, wisdom, and power do not protect anyone from being tempted. Each person believed he deserved the girl more than the others, just as people often believe they deserve wealth, status, or pleasure.
The lesson is not that the world should be completely rejected, but that becoming overly attached to it distracts us from finding our true being. When people spend their lives chasing worldly things, they often never reach true satisfaction and may lose peace and balance along the way.
The story reminds us to be careful about how much importance we give to worldly desires and not to let them control our lives.
How To Attain Knowledge
Another important topic I want to touch on is the difference between information, experience and knowledge. I have spoken about this many times, but it remains a major misunderstanding. Many people believe that hearing something, reading something, or attending a class automatically means they have become experienced. In reality, they have only collected information.
A simple example is cooking. You can watch a recipe online, read all the ingredients, and understand the steps. But until you cook the dish repeatedly, adjust it to your taste, and learn through experience, you have not truly gained the knowledge. Information only becomes knowledge through experience.
The same applies to spirituality. Listening to talks, reading books, or going on retreats gives us information. Knowledge comes only when we experience. Sometimes retreats and retrievals can give us experience, as there is focused practice, but even then, we must be careful not to delude ourselves into thinking that we have gained spiritual experience and, hence having knowledge. By working on ourselves and gaining experience, we are ultimately striving to gain knowledge.
Living In The Moment
Today’s reflection is about something we often miss. We rarely appreciate what we already have. There is a saying that when a fish is taken out of the water, only then does it realize the value of the water it lived in. In the same way, we often fail to value people, experiences, and blessings while they are still part of our lives. Only when they are gone do we suddenly realize what they meant to us. By then, it is often too late.
This happens because we are not truly present. When we are not living consciously in the moment, we can become forgetful and take everything for granted. Subsequently we become ungrateful. When we are living in the present, we naturally appreciate what we have. We live in the moment instead of regretting the past or worrying about the future.
Many of us have experienced this when someone passes away. After their death, people speak about how wonderful they were, how important they were, how much they meant. Yet, when that person was alive, appreciation was rarely expressed.
So, what do we need to do? We need to practice gratitude. Gratitude and appreciation should not only be for our loved ones, but also for everyone and everything in our life. Every experience we have, whether good or bad, has value. Even difficult experiences carry lessons, and we should be grateful for the awareness and understanding that those experiences brought into our lives. This is something we must remain conscious and vigilant about, especially if we are working toward being present.
Understanding The Spiritual Message
When we read figures like Rumi, Attar, or Saadi, we need to understand that some of their work has two sides. One side reflects the culture and conditions of the time they lived in, just like ours, were shaped by the society influences. The other side is spiritual, which comes from the heart, from a place that is not influenced by culture or their individual conditioning.
People often take the writing of these poets or saints and judge them by today’s standards, then dismiss part of the message. This is because they approach these writings with the mind rather than the heart. Criticism is easy, especially for those who lack an interest in spirituality. They pick out what they disagree with and ignore the deeper intention.
This also happens with the life of spiritual people. The critics judge them from their own perception, which is based on their own conditioning and culture. This leads to arrogance and blinds them to see the truth of the message. When you read spiritual writings, one needs to have a spiritual experience to distinguish the voice of the heart.
How We Don’t See Love
Shadow work is about looking within, facing the parts of ourselves we’d rather ignore. But often we don’t go deep enough. We have a perception of what others did to us instead of understanding what lies beneath those experiences. For example, many young people today criticize their parents — “My parents didn’t do this,” or “They should have done that.” Yet when they become parents themselves, they often realize how hard it really is. We forget that our parents might not have learned how to express their love in the way we expect it, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t love us. Love isn’t always shown in words; sometimes it’s hidden in action, in sacrifice. Imagine your child gives you a little gift — maybe their own toy wrapped in torn paper, half sticking out. You don’t see the imperfect wrapping; you see the love behind it. That’s how we should see our parents — imperfect in their giving, but full of love, nonetheless. And if they hadn’t cared, we wouldn’t have made it to adulthood. They must have gone through struggle and pain to give us a better life, but we forget, because we focus only on our own perception. Sometimes people shout, get angry, or act harshly — not because they don’t care, but because that’s the only way they know how to express their concern. Their nervous system, their upbringing, all shape how they show love.
It’s the same in relationships. We often expect love to look a certain way — the way we show it. But if our partner expresses it differently, we start feeling unloved. And that’s where resentment builds. We forget that people give love in the way they were taught to. So it’s important to be mindful. We all carry conditioning, small resentments, unspoken hurts — and they manifest in how we relate to others.
Be Truly Present
In the Sufi way we talk about our relationship with God — that deep awareness and connection that goes beyond just belief, and what it means to be truly present and in awe of His divine presence. If you look closely, similar teachings appear in other faiths too. For example, in the Bible, Matthew 6:33 says, “Put God first in your life and try to do what is right, and God will take care of everything else you need.” So, the message is universal: put God at the centre of your life. But the problem is, for most of us, God becomes secondary. We say we’re striving toward the eternal, but our focus gets scattered. We need to realign, to remember what truly matters. Many people wait for a saviour, someone to come and fix everything. But if you’re waiting for someone else to save you, what’s your purpose in this life? Why were you created? We need to look at our own experiences, reflecting on them. Because desire, though it looks like freedom, often becomes a cage. The desire to have more, to be more — it traps us, while deluding us to feel like we’re flying free.
Giving Not Out Of Abundance, But Out Of Compassion
A couple once went to a restaurant. They hadn’t been paid yet, so they told the waitress, “Please recommend the cheapest dish you have. We just want to share a meal together.”
The waitress served them kindly, and they enjoyed their food, surprised by how good it was. When they asked for the bill, she came back and said, “Your bill has been paid — and here’s an additional hundred pounds. Please enjoy the rest of your day.” They were overwhelmed. What they didn’t know was that this waitress herself was struggling. Her washing machine had broken, and she was washing clothes by hand, trying to save up for a new one. When her best friend heard what she’d done, she scolded her: “You’re crazy! You need that money more than they do!” The waitress began to doubt herself — until a few days later, her mother called and said, “Look at Facebook — that couple has posted about your kindness. Everyone’s talking about you.” Soon, people started reaching out — shops, charities, even strangers. One supermarket gifted her a new washing machine. Donations poured in. By the end of it all, she had received around a hundred thousand pounds — all because of one act of generosity. When asked about it, she said something beautiful: “Generosity isn’t about giving when you have extra. It’s about giving even when you yourself are in need.” And that’s the essence of divine love, isn’t it? Giving not out of abundance, but out of compassion.
Real Wealth Is Peace
The quieter we become, the more we can actually hear. Guidance, understanding, intuition — they all come through silence. Meditation helps, yes, but so does just being quieter in daily life. Talking less, reacting less — it creates space for peace. We often believe that more wealth and possessions create more happiness, and therefore this will in turn bring us more peace. But real wealth is peace. And that’s something that’s become so rare these days. We are also constantly chasing happiness, thinking it’s something to be found — but happiness isn’t found, it’s created. It’s built from small daily moments — from gratitude, kindness, and just being fully present.