Artists, Purpose, and the Unveiling Power of Tantra
In this captivating episode, we embark on a transformative exploration of finding your life's purpose as a creative, artist, or storyteller. Uncover practical strategies, inspiring stories, and profound insights to guide you on your unique path toward purposeful living.
Discover practical strategies, inspiring stories, and profound insights to guide you on your unique path. Embrace the alignment between creativity, authenticity, and purpose to lead a fulfilling and meaningful life. Join us as we dive deep into the realms of self-discovery, creativity, and meaning. Stay tuned for our next episode, where we'll continue to explore the depths of creativity and self-expression.
Episode Transcript
I feel and believe that life purpose is overrated, especially the way it's talked about in schools, marketing seminars, online space. It's overrated, and yet it's the most essential thing you've got to explore. The overrated part is the noise that exists around it, and the essential part is the one that continues to speak to you through your silence, through your work, through your art, through your pains, hopes, disappointments and longings. Life purpose is not about finding what you've got to do, but it's already waiting for you to experience in who you are. Once you know who you are and you embrace who you are and you cultivate a self reverence and passion for your own existence, the life purpose will expand and bloom effortlessly.
In this episode, I want to go deeper into what's the tantric perspective on decoding your life purpose and what does it mean for an artist and a storyteller to live that divine purpose? I am Chandresh Bhardwaj, and this is Leela Gurukul.
Namaste everyone, I hope you're feeling easy, cozy, and grounded. Two important announcements before we go deeper into this episode. The need to have a community, the need to create a safe and divine space for Tantra teachings continue to be more relevant, continues to speak to my heart, and that's the reason why I'm pausing or ending even the teaching the live cohorts in Leela Gurukul and instead making it an exciting space where the Tantra work will continue to build every month and it will be accessible and available to everyone. But while that will take its own sweet time, my hope is by end of the year you all can experience it, you all can be part of it. But it's still July, 2023, and one exciting and fun element that's showing up is to invite what I'm calling the founding members of this Tantra tribe. These are the members that will be handpicked, selectively chosen to be part of this lifelong Tantra tribe. And I'm using the word lifelong, which means as long as this Tantra tribe exists, we all will be building this together.
I've already started inviting the seekers who are curious, available, interested in building this Tantra tribe from scratch with me. That would also mean it cannot have too many people. It won't be founding members anymore. It needs to have a certain selective group, and we will be interacting, communicating, building this together. If you see yourself being part of a Tantra tribe for Lifetime, drop an email to info@leelagurukul.com or drop a DM on Leela Gurukul Instagram or my Instagram CBMeditates and just write Tantra tribe. Once we have your email, you will be contacted. And when the right time hits, which should be in a few weeks, we'll start to have our discussions, conversations and see where it goes.
Second fun announcement is, I got two spots open for my Advanced Tantra Mastery coaching. It's a deep dive commitment for six months and it is one-on-one coaching designed to elevate your calmness, courage, clarity, freedom within the Tantra space. It's for curious, ambitious storytellers, artists, writers, directors, and honestly anyone who is ready and willing to unleash that inner divine creative force. If that feels exciting to you, the same template, drop an email to info@leelagurukul.com or drop a DM to me on CBMeditates on Instagram and just write coaching and I'll handle the rest. Now, let's get into the life purpose.
I call it overrated because there is so much unnecessary and useless discussion that keeps happening, and I'm calling it useless because it's in the wrong direction. The younger generation, the one who's in school, college, still trying to figure out what they want to do with their life, they are under so much stress. In my times, the stress was only from school or college or family or the extended family circle. So that pressure, that stress will always speak to you in some way. But with the younger generation who's currently in school and college, their struggle is much more wider because not only the family, school friends, they are adding their pressure, but they are also getting interesting uninvited pressure from the social media noise. And of course, the unfortunate part of this whole life purpose discussion is you could be in your 50s, 60s and still have this confusion, complexity about the life purpose. You could be in your 80s and still have this question of life purpose. And this is why I call it overrated. Because the way we were raised or brainwashed to understand life purpose was that it's supposed to give you some sort of security, financial security, emotional security, and life purposes, some sort of puzzle that once you solve, you are set for life.
Thankfully, in my work, I meet plenty of people from various backgrounds, cultural, professional backgrounds, different mindset beliefs, and I can tell you one thing with complete confidence, you could be sitting on a six to seven figure of monthly financial revenue and still be very confused and complex about the life purpose. Money doesn't have much to do with your life purpose. You could still make a lot of money without knowing your life purpose because money is not directly related to happiness, but that bliss, that joy, what I call Ananda, the eternal bliss within, that has a lot to do with your life purpose. Once you're living that life purpose and you are thriving and blooming in that Ananda, then having abundance, be it creative abundance, spiritual abundance, financial abundance, that becomes effortless. You are no more chasing it. So while you might be running after money or that perfect relationship or really hustling hard to know what you want to do, forget about everything and just get to know yourself. Once you know yourself, everything else is going to unfold in its magical way.
For those who have been the usual suspects on the Leela podcast, they know this story, but the newer ones, I want to share this one more time. It never gets old for me because each time I think about it, something new, something surprising shows up. I'm talking about my journey.
I grew up in a family of spiritual teachers. Everyone used to ask me, so are you going to be the next Tantra guru in your lineage? And my answer used to be a straight no, effortless no, because in my head, and I'm talking about the teenager CB, the teenager me had only one benchmark, and that one benchmark was of my father, my teacher. I would see him being so amazingly good at his job and I would see myself that I'm like, "I'm not cut out for this," because I see this great spiritual leader, the one who's helping people selflessly, the one who is always available for others. And then I see myself, and I was a teenager then, loved cinema then, I love cinema now, loved poetry then, I love poetry now, I love exploring the feminine energy then, I love exploring it Now, I loved the complexity of human behavior. I love it even now. And in my head, these were not the qualifications to go deeper into this path.
And I also saw the high of the high, material success, and I also saw the lowest of the lowest of poverty. And when you're watching both the worlds and you're also experiencing certain challenges yourself on a financial level, you notice money might be the most important thing I got to accomplish. And every single person around me was just hustling and working to have that financial security. Back then I was in India in high school, and a fun thing happened in high school. There was a poetry contest online. It was in Maryland US, and I was in India in this small town, but thanks to dial up internet, I discovered that contest I submitted upon, it got selected, it also won the first prize back then. I don't think it was that good, but I'm glad, grateful they selected it. And they also printed that poem and sent it to me all the way back in India.
And I remember showing it off to my school teachers, of course, my friends, and of course that the girls in my class that I really wanted to impress. And everybody was impressed. So mission accomplished. But that was first time my writing knocked my door and said, "I'm here for you. Are you available to me?" I wanted to be available to the muse, but I did not have the courage because there were voices around me who were telling me, poetry is fun for this, you write it, you submit, it's a hobby. You cannot make this a profession.
Now remember, my grandfather was a highly renowned published poet in Urdu, Farsi, Arabic. He wrote books. He translated Bhagavad Gita, the holy text of Hinduism into a poetry. I mean, I don't know how he managed to do it. Even being his grandson, I was afraid to step into poetry because the capitalism, the hustle, the noise around you could influence you. So I said no to exploring poetry, and instead I got deeper into accounts and finance. I was unhappy, but everybody was unhappy studying what they study. And I was still in 11th grade in India, and you have to choose your major in 11th grade if you study in India. Then I moved to New York. I moved to New York because dad was already here, and he said, "The schooling is amazing. There's a great business school. You're studying finance and accounts, so why don't you apply?" And I applied, got selected. So the whole family, my mother, I and dad, we were in New York and I joined school, a business school in New York studying finance and accounts, still unhappy.
And one fun thing happened in school. I had a very uneasy encounter with the school security. She wouldn't let me go into the whole locker space because it was, I think there was something happening either after school hours or students were not allowed to go during that particular day. But what I was unhappy about was her attitude I felt, and I used to be very fussy about it. I'm not sure if I'm still that fussy about that kind of attitude, but I always had challenges with authority, school, airports, temples, wherever authority exists, I will have a solid problem that would escalate in few minutes.
So I had challenge with her and I came home feeling grumpy, angry, and I also saw her watching a movie on her laptop, and that's why she was not paying attention to my questions. So I wrote this whole article how the School securities failing its Students. I hustled for a few days to figure out where do I publish this article. And I finally found the newspaper office. I loved stepping into it, lots of words, passionate young people, writing articles, making sure their voice is heard. That was a very powerful energy for me. The energy was so powerful I dropped the idea of submitting this angry article because I cracked the code, how do I submit it? Instead, I wrote an article about conscious thinking, and the title was, Beware of What You Think, It Might Just Come True.
I wrote the article, I was terrible in writing English. That wasn't my first language. So I shared the article with my friends. They edited it a bit. Then I submitted, then I got an email from the editor of newspaper that, "I love the article. The business school students are under high stress, so they would benefit, even the professors would benefit. So I'm going to publish this, but if you are open to write every week, I would love to give you a space in the business newspaper of City University of New York." I laughed at the email because I was like, she doesn't know I don't even know how to write properly in English. And thank God, while I was laughing, my teacher saw me and he was like, "What's going on? Why are you laughing?" And I told him, and I thought he would also laugh. And he said, "You've got to accept this." And I remember telling him, I said, "Dad, I don't know how to write properly in English. I translate your Hindi spiritual lectures into my own terrible English, and I don't think this is a good idea." He said, "Writing, creativity is your fuel, and if you say yes to it's going to open up some new gateway."
And at that time, I had a zero idea and zero confidence in what he was saying, but I've always respected him and believed him as the spiritual teacher he is. So I didn't want to say no to the spiritual teacher, to the guru who was speaking to me. So only and only because he told me to say yes to them, I said yes, and it began a series of a weekly column in the business newspaper. Long story short, I ended up writing the weekly columns till I stayed in the college, till I graduated. And that gave me confidence to write my book, Break The Norms that gave me confidence to write on social media, blogs, everything that I did after that. And now when people ask me, what was it that you did that worked for you, that made you say yes? Of course the guidance of Guru was there, but guidance alone cannot do the magic. You need your own strength to match that guidance. Because when guidance meets courage, self-trust, passion, play, and above all patience, and something beautiful can happen.
I still think the one key ingredient in that whole experience of embracing the writing and then getting a job at my favorite bank on Wall Street and then leaving the job in few months because I wanted to explore spirituality as a profession, that whole thing had one thing in common. I was getting a taste of who I am. I didn't have enough talent. I didn't have enough resources. I didn't have any plan. I didn't know where I was going. But the only thing that kept on showing up was this is who you are. You are the kind of person who loves to write. You are the kind of person who loves to explore spirituality, goddess energy. And thankfully, I trusted that curiosity of who I am.
My meditations were intense, but long hours. And somewhere that meditation cultivated patience gave me hope. Let me tell you, that entire phase, be it leaving the job, starting break the norms, doing the talks, teaching meditation. For many years, it was pure torture, nightmare. I hated the process of it many times. I hated the spiritual market. I felt it was very toxic, highly competitive, and you have to be a clown. You still have to be a clown. But that's where I wanted to do it my way, I didn't want to be a clown in the circus, didn't want to show up for every performance. And if I showed up for any performance back then, I did it my way and I didn't repeat it. I stopped showing up after that and I figured one thing, I know who I am or I'm getting to know who I am. So if I only honor and respect and keep showing up for who I am, I think I can figure out my next step.
And this is still the formula I'm using to figure out my next steps, the reason I'm talking about Tantra, goddesses, storytellers, artists, because this is who I am still. I have deep love for creatives, for artists, for storytellers, And I genuinely feel there is a storyteller, an artist living in each one of us. And sometimes you play with it, sometimes you hold yourself back, sometimes you suppress it, sometimes you express it. But we possibly cannot exist as a human being without getting a feel, a taste of that art that lives in us. And when you are not honoring that artistic energy in you, the body shows the signs, stress, anxiety, chronic diseases, psychological disorders, sometimes physical illnesses that become too big, too crazy, too intense, too painful to handle. And I feel if I could inspire you, wake you up too, connect Tantra with your art to unleash the inner artist and live it unapologetically and abundantly, I feel a certain mission of my life will be accomplished.
And that also reminds me, it's been 22 minutes of me talking and I have not yet defined what is life purpose. I gave you my whole story because I feel the story was important because the definition that I'm going to give you has a lot to do with the story I just shared. And this definition is coming from the Tantra teachings. And Tantra says, "Life does not have a purpose. Life is purposeless, but life in itself is a purpose." I repeat. Life does not have a purpose. Life is a purpose. Purpose. The best way to experience it is through Leela, not the podcast, not the school, but Leela in itself. Leela means play. Play of consciousness.
What happens in the play? You watch play. A good play has plot twist. It's designed to surprise you, it's designed to make you cry, laugh, be in shock, be sad, be angry. It's designed to give you all the rasas, all the flavors of life. And if you haven't lived all your flavors yet, I'm reminding you to live those. Spirituality, sexuality, poetry, hope, pain, disappointment, anger, shadow, all of it and so much more. And if you have not understood the flavors that rasas of the other person, you have no right to judge them. You have no right to cancel them if you have not understood their flavors.
It's a fashion nowadays to cancel judge and drop your opinions online and hiding behind a username. I'm not a fan of it. That's a keyboard revolution that is born and dies in less than one minute. That's not expression of a boiling blood. It's an expression of a lukewarm water that will evaporate in any minute. If you are living the Leela in your life, you're going to live a playful life.
I was talking to a client yesterday and he shared how there is an old relationship showing up after many years, and a new dating interest is also blending in. And the creative play, the creative spirit is finding a deep expression than ever before. And he was a bit stressed out about it. I said, "Imagine if this was a show, would you want to watch the next episode?" And he said, "Absolutely, yes." And then I reminded my client, this is the divine script happening for you. God is writing this script. The universe is writing this script. It's exciting, it's juicy. It's got all the flavors and how selfish it is that you would watch this, but you can't live this. You've got to give this much of passion and play to your life. It wants it. It deserves it. Life in itself is the purpose. And when you show up for that life on a daily basis, when you show up to understand its flavors, my friend, you are living the purpose. You living the divine purpose, the way it's meant to be. You're designed to live a multidimensional life, but the mind wants you to reduce that multidimensional to one narrow idea and get stuck there.
If you can't wake up to all the flavors of your life, then you will not be able to wake up to your spiritual awakening too. Because the way I'll show up for my meditation is how I will show up for my work. The way I will show up for my work is how I will show up for my spiritual Sadhana. Also, if I'm making my work a very tedious, monotonous, strict, rigid, tough process, then my Sadhana will also be the same. If everything I'm doing in my work is for a specific outcome and that's what I'm hustling after, then my Sadhana will also be for an outcome. If you have a goal in your spiritual path, that is a huge obstacle and that will always limit you, your spiritual experiences, your meditations are not meant to have a goal. Meditation in itself is a poetry. Poetry cannot have a goal.
It's like looking at a tree and asking yourself, what's the goal of this tree? What's the purpose of this tree? Is it going to heal 50 people? And if you could speak to a tree and ask the tree this question, I think the tree will not answer. I think the tree will found this question very dumb. It wouldn't want to answer. And I don't blame the tree.
We do everything with certain outcome. We spent money and energy on the backyards gardening not because many times we do it only because it has to look good, you have to appear in a certain way. How many times we are doing it because we want to feel the leaves in our hands. We want to feel the flowers in our hands. We want to play with water. We want to play with soil. I've seen those people growing up in the Himalayas. My grandfather was a farmer, my mom's dad, but my mom's family is farmer's family. I've seen them playing with soil. I've seen them playing joyfully with the soil and how beautiful it is. And one thing that I constantly work on is to bring that playfulness. Just like you I'm also product of capitalism. I'm living in metro cities. I have all Apple products right now as I speak. I'm constantly going to look out for a new gadget, a better mic, a better phone, a better app. And I remind myself not to indulge in it. Many times I fail, sometimes I succeed.
But we can remind ourselves to live a life purpose that is blended in playfulness and anything can become play. I love thinking stock market finances accounts with that energy because numbers could be playful. Speak to a person who loves numbers and they'll tell you there's a lot of poetry in stock market. There's a lot of toxicity also, but there's also poetry, it depends how you choose to work, how you wish to work.
I want to share the struggles, the challenges you might be experiencing to unleash that life purpose as a storyteller, as a creative artist. And as we share the challenges, we will talk about the solutions. I want you to wrap up this episode with a new inspired energy and solutions. And one of the biggest challenge I see among the creative rebellious thinkers is fear. Fear of failure. Fear of being seen in a certain way by others. It could be very vulnerable to share your work with others, and nobody sees it. And when they see it, they reject you. They don't buy your work, they don't invest their emotional energy in your work. That feels disheartening, that feels terrible. But the point is, if you're choosing to create art, you have to channel that failure. You have to understand rejection is a redirection. Rejection is a reflection on how you could enjoy it more.
Tantra has a fascinating principle on it. Each time you will go outside of yourself to seek validation, are going to invite anxiety and disappointment. But if you choose to go deeper within you, you'll always find inspiration, you'll find new courage, new realization, A new lesson.
Journey of an artist is the journey of total fearlessness. And noticed many artists create their first work of art, it could be the movie, a painting, a sculpture, writing a book. The first pieces are always innocent. They're brilliant. There is so much childlike energy in them. And the moment that piece of art starts to get acknowledgement, acceptance, abundance, corruption also happens because then they feel they need to cater to the gallery. But they forget, the reason they were first accepted was because they were not catering to the gallery, they were creating in fearlessness. So the first lesson here is know your fears. What is it that holds you back? What is it that makes you afraid of failure? Who comes to your mind if you fail? Whom do you think you will disappoint? If a certain person shows up in your mind, either talk to them. If you can't talk to them, can't communicate on that vulnerable level, then reflect within. Write a journal about it. Imagine you have failed, totally, loyally, religiously, gloriously have failed. What could happen? What's the worst that could happen? Notice the emotions, embrace them, release them, and then get back to your art. Get back to that fearlessness.
The daily energy is filled with that power. The reason I meditate is to cultivate that fearlessness, is to cultivate that courage, to express my art, to express my love for the goddess energy, for Tantra. Last week, I released episode on Yoni Goddess Kamakhya. I don't think I could have done that 10 years ago. I think I would've had many thoughts about it. A man talking about Yoni goddess, how crazy. It didn't feel crazy at all last week because Goddess Kamakhya has become my playground. But the deep reason also is I have obsessively meditated on finding the courage to be who I am. It's still a process in work. Still it takes quite an effort to be in that space because obviously the noise has increased. Toxicity in our culture has increased. Challenges have increased, and we need courage more than ever.
Step two, challenge number two is self-doubt. I don't know what's the root of your self-doubt. Maybe you were not seen or celebrated or heard properly when you created your first art. Maybe too many failures happened. Maybe your talent didn't meet the financial reward. How do you handle the self-doubt? Tantra ways to respect the doubt. Don't doubt the doubt. Witness the doubt. Explore the doubt. Sit with your doubt. Be friends with your doubt. You'll find your doubt to be a wounded energy. It's tired. It's tired of being the doubt. It wants to unleash itself into an art. It wants to be adored. It wants to be expressed. If you could paint that doubt, how would that painting look? If you could write a book about that doubt, how would that book feel like? How would that read like? If you could understand that doubt into your work, how would that doubt find energy?
Buddha gave a mantra to his students, his final mantra, and I know many of you already know it, but I'll say it again, Aapo Deepa Bhava. Be your own light. You could be your own light and your mind, body and soul will honor it without any doubt, without any hesitation. And you could not believe in your light. You could believe the light does not exist, and the mind, body and soul will honor that also, because fortunately or unfortunately, mind, body and soul are so neutral, they're constantly listening to your longings, to your beliefs, to your frequency, and respecting whatever shows up there. Aapo de. Be your own light, my friend.
And remember to sit with your doubts every day the way I do it, when I sit in the meditation, I would reflect on that doubt. I would explore the why of my doubt. If it means sitting with a little CB, if it means sitting with the adult CB, I'll do it. If it means grieving, letting go of something, do it. It won't happen in one night. It's not supposed to happen in one night. And the doubts can exist always, but you can always work with them. Use them, channel them.
I would doubt this episode I'm creating, but I would not doubt myself as a human, there's a difference. You can doubt the art, but don't doubt the artist. If you doubt your art, your creative piece, I believe it can polish, improve the quality of your art. But if I start doubting the source and the source is me in this moment, and I mean on a deeper level, the source is collective, but through me, it's expressing itself. So I don't want to show up here doubting my existence, but having a deep reverence instead, knowing that in this moment, in this time and space, I happen to talk about Tantra and life purpose. That is not a coincidence.
And I can still doubt after this episode is done. In fact, I do that many times. I genuinely don't like listening myself many times, but whenever I do, I'm filled with compassion. I'm filled with so much love. And I don't know how that sounds, but the love and compassion comes because I've seen myself not able to speak, not able to talk, and having that as my biggest struggle. So now when I hear myself, I'm like, good job. That's not bad. I thought you did terrible, but you did good.
There was a time, I still remember that moment I was in high school, middle school actually, and my teacher said, I asked my teacher, "can you check my notebook?" And I didn't know how to phrase that. So I asked my uncle that tomorrow I'm going to school after four days, and that teacher speaks English and I want to tell her, can you check my notebook? Because I wasn't here and how do I do that? And he said, "you'll say, ma'am, can you check my notebook?" And this is school in India. So ma'am, sir, it's very normal and polite thing to do, and I prepared it. I went to school and I said, "Ma'am, can you check my notebook, please?" And I was like, yep, job done. And then she said, "Bhardwaj, where were you yesterday?" And I replied, "I am absent." And she said, "It's not I'm absent, it's I was absent." But she did it with so much love. I've never forgotten that moment. I didn't know the difference between I am and I was remember writing it in my notebooks that when I have to describe it in the past, I'll say I was absent and not I am absent.
So now when I look at the Leela podcast or the books I'm planning, in my mind, I do feel proud. But the doubts have been a guiding force. I didn't like when I wouldn't know what to talk or how to talk. So I would doubt that I would work hard on it. But I've never doubted the strength that I carry within, I've never doubted the willpower I carry within. Of course, there are moments when I have zero willpower, I'm wounded, fracture and scattered. But deep down, I know I'll get back to it. It could take days or weeks, but I'll get back to it. I'm not going to give up on this. So my friend reminding you to not giving up on that. Doubt the art, it's fine. Do not doubt your existence. Do not doubt your strength in this process.
Next one, the loneliness, the lonely show that your art becomes. It's such a complex space because I'm a loner. I love being alone. I love being an introvert. I love being in my own universe when I'm creating my work. Break The Norms book was written in the night, times like midnight, sometimes from midnight until morning. I still love being in that space. But of course, as a human, you also start to feel depressed, lonely, isolated. When COVID started and we didn't have to go out, we didn't have to mingle or socialize. I can tell you my creativity multiplied. I mean, so much of what I'm enjoying in my business and my work, a lot of that started in COVID because I just had so much creativity, so much energy. But loneliness has another friend to it, aloneness, and I want to talk about that. Aloneness is a deep state of who we are. So when a mystic sits in meditation, when a dancer dances to her own tunes, when a poet writes the music, they're channeling that aloneness. They're not writing it with a hundred people. They're somewhere connected with their inner voice. They're somewhere connected with that unknown energy. And some magic happens.
I know accountants who love working by themselves, they actually start working in the nighttime. They love doing that. And this is why my perspective and definition of an artist has changed and evolved so much. You could be making subway sandwiches, and that's your art, my friend, and you could choose to do it all with your aloneness. Aloneness is huge in Tantra. Tantra recommends and suggests that we all practice aloneness where we are not chatting, indulging with any social media, where we are not indulging in any gossip, where we are not seeking validation from others. Where you are so much in love with that silence, with that solitude. No matter how much of an introvert or extrovert you are, you've got to practice aloneness and learn to respect it. Otherwise, even your greatest art will be influenced by the outside validation. Even your greatest piece of work will be deeply dominated by the outside noise.
The other side of aloneness is loneliness. That is depressing because that is the noise of society telling you you're lonely, nobody likes you, nobody wants you. You can't have a fulfilling relationship with anyone, you're just a lonely person. Address that loneliness. Aloneness is by choice. Loneliness is a product of the social noise we are surrounded with. The noise of family, the noise of culture, the noise of society. And people choose wrong relationships to get rid of that loneliness. But a beautiful relationship will happen if and when you choose to address it with that gentle, sacred aloneness.
My episode on Sacred Hours is a great example of just cultivating that aloneness. When you become comfortable with aloneness, a sacred tribe shows up. That tribe could have two people, three people, or even one more person, but it expands, it evolves. It's the tribe that respects your aloneness, but also gives you the comfort, the safety, the warmth that you seek. Aloneness, attracts partnership, friendships that are lifelong, that are rooted in love, compassion, safety, creativity. So instead of chasing the next best creative community space, first, build that aloneness, that respect for aloneness and see where it takes you.
Next challenge, financial insecurity. I want to mention two popular goddesses here, Goddess Lakshmi and Goddess Saraswati. Lakshmi is the goddess of abundance, financial abundance. Saraswati is the goddess of creativity. And there's a story, story that has its beautiful conclusion. The conclusion is, Lakshmi is gifted with playfulness. She'll always be fluid like a river. She'll always want to flow. She doesn't want to be possessed, controlled, or stay at one place. So the more you rotate that money, the more you invest that money for your creative growth, spiritual growth, the growth in your education, other areas of life, it'll always multiply. That is the gift of Lakshmi. But Saraswati has a very unique gift. Saraswati says, "When I show up for you and you nurture me, you honor me. I'll never leave you. I'll always be with you. You could be 16 year old or 66 year old, or 106 year old, I'll always be with you." Saraswati never leaves you, which means your art, your creativity, your love of storytelling will only multiply if you choose to work with it.
But the plot twist in the story is, after Lakshmi heard this, Lakshmi said, "That is a big commitment. You'll never leave them." And Saraswati said, "Yes, I'll never leave the seekers who show up for me." And Lakshmi said, "So wherever you go, I'll join you. How about that?" And it's believed they both had an agreement since then that when you honor Saraswati, Lakshmi will join you. When you honor your creativity, your art, abundance will join you. Of course, easier said than done, because there are many other factors. There are many other layers that you have to address and heal before you show up for Saraswati and Lakshmi joins you. But that's a fascinating and playful process. It doesn't have to be rooted in stress or drama or anxiety. This is where your therapist, your guru, your teacher, your coach, your mentor, they all can help you and support you.
And the last and final point here is lack of courage. We are not trained to be courageous. We are not trained to show up with inner strength. We have to build it. As we are growing up, we watch too much drama, pain, insecurity, dramas, and they live with us, the body remembers it, but there's a way to reverse it. And before I share the way to reverse it, I want you to honor and embrace who you are as this human consciousness. Only a human consciousness is gifted with this ability to constantly reinvent and rediscover their passion, their play, their purpose. If you show for yourself, the life purpose will show up for you.
And I'm going to wrap up the next point in one word, AIM. A-I-M, action, intention, and meditation. We shared many actions in this episode, but one fun action I want you to experiment with is doing the opposite. When you want to create your art, when you want to tell your story, when you want to pursue your energy in one direction, ask yourself, is there an opposite way of doing it? And then do that. When my second book wasn't received well by the publisher and they came up with a different idea, I didn't agree with it, and the whole thing collapsed, and it didn't leave a good taste in my heart.
I knew I want to do something with my creative energy. So after many months I felt YouTube videos, they might be easy and fun for me. But then my awareness was like, that's your comfort zone. What's not the comfort zone? What's the opposite of video? The opposite of video is audio. That was not my comfort zone because I never listened to podcasts back then. I always felt, what if people don't understand my accent? What if they don't understand what I'm saying? On the video at least they can read lips and it's a different medium. But somewhere I felt inspired, excited to do the opposite. And I did that. And I'm glad I did it because it connected me with so many absolutely wonderful seekers. So choose an action and don't be afraid to do the opposite.
And number two, intention. Intention is the conscious desire of your soul. And there are plenty of episodes where I talk about intention. In one word intention is knowing in what environment or in what element you will bloom and nurture. That is your intention. Your intention could be to nurture your art with freedom, courage, and clarity. That's all. And everything else will follow.
And number three, meditation. Our energies are scattered. We are rooted in fear, anxiety, uncertainty, unpredictability of life. And that leaves us exhausted, scared, afraid, insecure. Meditation is one powerful formula that can put together everything and create a courageous aura, energy, and change everything in your life. A consistent meditation practice can absolutely and will change your life. A meditation without art is tasteless. And art without meditation is irrelevant. They both have to go together. Tantra supports art and art supports Tantra.
I hope this episode was inspiring and fun to you. I had so much fun talking about it, and I hope you pick some action points and implement in your life. And remember, if you are entrusted in being a lifetime member of a Tantra community, email or drop a message with the word Tantra tribe. And for those who are excited and willing to do a deep dive, one-on-one coaching with me, message coaching, and we'll handle the rest. Be safe, guys. Be well. Create your art. Unleash the inner muse in you. And if you could share your art with me, I'll be honored to see it. I'll be excited to see it. Take care. Bye-bye.
May the teachings of Tantra continue to guide you and heal you. And I hope Leela Gurukul helps you to unlearn the old and embrace the unknown mystical possibility unfolding for you. To support this podcast, share it among the seekers who are ready for the next step in their spiritual path.
Useful Links
CB's Instagram Tantra Mastery Channel
Visit cbmeditates.com to send your questions and to know more about Chandresh's work.
