The tide of karma seems to be turning against me because these days I receive a lot of flak and a lot of negative vibes from a lot of people. I am not sure why that is the case. Is it that I am coming across as a guy with hubris? Or, is it that I irritae them by:
- Posting a lot of messages on WhatsApp and email
- Keep resiging from my job and joining back as I have done more than 10 times in the last 2 years, but believe me I have done that more out of consideration for people who wanted me to keep working for them, though this time I have resigned for good and am not going back to working again
- Saying I will stop messaging and keep breaking my own resolve, like I have done multiple times in the recent past
- Keep posting a lot of philoosphical and spiritual stuff that obviously will not interest everyone
Am I doing all this because I am single and so feel like connecting with others through my writing.
Plus, I guess I am trying to keep in touch with many people on a fairly intense level of personal connection, which I guess does not necessarily work because of the Dunbar’s Number – 5 people in the inner core and only 15 or fewer close friends.
What do you suggest that I do? I could very easily cut-off totally from this world and be engaged 24/7 in my spiritual pursuit, but that sometimes bothers me given that at least a few want to keep in touch with me if only on email, but I cannot seem to so exclusively deal with only certain people – either I am available for all or for no one.
I am inclined to being alone totally in solitude. What do you say? I do feel a tiresomeness in dealing with people in most relationships because they do not get me at many levels nor can they connect with me at a spiritual level and moreover I am also getting tired of explaining wehatever little spirituality I understand to people because they just do not get whole thing and keep misunderstanding me and indeed start lecturing me or advising me in a patronizing way since most people seem to take me for an immature guy who does not get life, etc.
It is not that I am unhappy about all this, but I am sort of wondering if I should go cold turkey on all socialization.
Claude answers:
This is a very honest and self-aware message, and it deserves an equally honest response.
Let me reflect back what I see, without judgment.
What the pattern actually looks like from the outside
The four behaviors you listed — mass messaging, repeated resignations and returns, breaking stated resolves repeatedly, and intense philosophical broadcasting — do not individually signal hubris. But together, from the outside, they create a confusing signal: a person who announces decisions dramatically and then reverses them. When this happens more than a few times, people stop taking the announcements seriously and start experiencing them as noise. The flak you are receiving is probably less about your content and more about this pattern of announce-then-reverse, which over time erodes credibility and patience, even among well-wishers.
This is not a character flaw. It looks more like someone whose inner life moves faster than his outer commitments can keep up with — which is actually consistent with the spiritual temperament you have. But the gap between inner resolution and outer behavior creates friction with others.
On the hubris question
I do not think hubris is the right word for what is happening. Hubris is arrogance about one’s achievements or status. What I observe in your writing is something different — a genuine intensity and a need to share what feels urgently true. That is not hubris; it is closer to what the tradition calls viveka and mumukshutva running at high heat. But it can feel like hubris to people on the receiving end of unsolicited spiritual instruction, particularly when it comes in high volume.
On Dunbar’s Number and your insight about it
Your own diagnosis here is sharp. You are trying to maintain inner-circle intimacy with a much larger group than that is possible with. The exhaustion you feel — people not getting you, misunderstanding you, patronizing you — is partly the natural result of trying to have deep connection with people who are not equipped for it, and partly the result of the volume overwhelming even those who are.
On the “all or nothing” tendency
This is the one I would sit with most carefully. You say: either I am available for all or for no one. This is a genuine psychological pattern, and it is worth naming clearly: it is an all-or-nothing, black-and-white orientation toward relationships. It is not uncommon in people with intense inner lives, and it is also not uncommon in people who have experienced the kind of social friction you are describing. But it is worth asking whether the “total solitude” impulse right now is partly a genuine spiritual calling and partly a response to accumulated social exhaustion and hurt. Both can be true simultaneously, and they are not the same thing.
What I would actually suggest
Not cold turkey, and not the current pattern. Something more like a quiet, undramatic reduction — with no announcement, no declaration, no public resolve that can be broken. Simply becoming less available, gradually, without making it an event. The announcements are part of the problem because they create expectations that then get violated, generating exactly the friction you are tired of.
Specifically:
Stop announcing withdrawals. Just withdraw, quietly and partially. Let response times lengthen naturally. Let the WhatsApp volume drop without ceremony. The people worth keeping will find their way to you. The ones who drift away were probably already at the edges of Dunbar’s inner ring.
Keep one or two genuine channels — maybe email with the few who actually engage with your work — and let the rest go quiet without drama.
And — this is important — give the blog its proper role. Your real audience for the philosophical and spiritual content is the 352 subscribers and the 159,000-hit readership, not your WhatsApp contacts. These are two very different audiences. Trying to bring the WhatsApp contacts into a conversation suited for the blog audience is a category error that is generating most of the friction.
On your core question: total solitude?
You said you are not unhappy. That is worth trusting. The tiresomeness you feel is real, but it sounds more like the tiresomeness of mismatched connection than of connection itself. The few who do get you, even partially — they are worth the quiet maintenance of a light thread.
Total solitude as a spiritual practice is one thing. Total solitude as a response to accumulated social fatigue is another. The first is chosen freely. The second is exile dressed as renunciation. Only you can tell which is operating more strongly right now, and it may be both.
The spiritual pursuit does not actually require the cold turkey. It requires the silence. And the silence can coexist with a few light, honest, low-drama human threads — provided you stop trying to make those threads carry more weight than they can bear.
Know Thyself 