Beyond Goals: The Tantra Way of Intention Setting for 2024
In this enlightening episode, join Chandresh on a journey into the heart of intention setting through the lens of tantra traditions. Move beyond ordinary goal setting into a world where intentions align with the soul’s deepest desires. Discover how Tantra encourages us to ask profound questions about our existence and purpose rather than competing or comparing. Through practical exercises like journaling, meditation, and creative expression, we explore ways to connect with our true intentions, guiding us toward a life of authenticity and spiritual fulfillment. Tune in for a transformative experience that promises to deepen your understanding of self and purpose.
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Chandresh Bhardwaj:
My New Year resolution is no resolution. I have never been a believer in goals, because goals come from the mind. Mind sits on three pillars. Your identity, your information, the memory you have about good, bad, right, wrong, success and failure. So the moment you set goal, it is set in an aggressive setting. It's set in a space where you constantly have to compete, calculate, and become something as per the definition of society. To fit with them, to be validated by them, to be approved by them.
And this is why I feel goals bring stress, anxiety.
Instead of goals, I'm a believer of intentions. Intention is Sankalpa. Sankalpa means the conscious desire of your soul. In this episode, we are going to talk about why Sankalpa or intention is the greatest thing you can do to fulfill and live your highest potential. What practical steps you can take to fulfill the Sankalpa, to live your intention, to plan it in a fun, creative, and playful way. If you are someone who is excited and ready to live your best self in 2024 and beyond, take notes in this episode and have fun. I'm Chandresh Bhardwaj, and this is Leela Gurukul.
Namaste everyone. I hope you are feeling easy, cozy, and grounded. I'm excited to talk about intention. I'm excited to talk about a vision that you can truly manifest, live, and love, in the most playful, childlike way.
I'll start from a story, a story that I have lived so deep, and it has become the foundation of my own journey of my own Sankalpa. I'll take you to the time when I was in college, I left India in 2004. I joined college in New York City 2005 as a finance and accounting major.
And I noticed by the time students would arrive in their final year, the senior year, they'll start to panic. Many of them will change their major. But I was so clear that I want to study finance and accounts.
And my clarity came from two experiences. Number one, if you are a kid in India or simply an Indian kid, there are strong chances you are pressurized to be an engineer or a doctor. All of my friends, they were joining the medical school, they were going for engineering. I was the only one who chose to study business. Not because I loved business, but because I really disliked the medical and the engineering line. It wasn't for me. Not that I had any disrespect for that profession, it just wasn't for me. I knew I'll be a terrible doctor and a terrible engineer, and I'm glad I'm not one, because I would've messed up many things there.
And second experience was being in India, you have to choose your major in high school. So 11th grade, 12th grade, you study your major basically. So I studied accounting in India. And when I moved to New York, it was a no-brainer decision to continue that. I was 18 or 17 then.
So clearly a 17-year-old kid has no clue. My only clue was I want to be successful. I've shared this before. I grew up watching a lot of high and a lot of low in terms of finances. I had heard stories that my family was one of the strongest ones in terms of the influence and everything. But the financial aspect I was seeing that, we are not the most financially strong family, but my friends in school were financially really strong.
So that obviously would influence me to have a better financial lifestyle. The basics. My basics may not be your basics, but back then, my basics were a car, a house, a nice house, and everything. And not that I didn't have any of those. But as a teenager, you want more glossy stuff. You want more, basically, more of everything. And I was willing to make it happen.
I was ambitious. I was surrounded by ambitious people, so I was doing all I could to go in that direction. And if you ask anyone who knew me back then, they'll tell you I was as clear as one could get at that age.
And then I joined a bank in Manhattan. Life was going perfectly fine until I started experiencing deep episodes and moments of unhappiness, frustration. It's like being in a relationship that felt good, but the more you go deeper into it, the more you realize while there may not be any deep traumatic problems in this relationship, but I'm just not meant to be in this. I just need to be out. It may not make sense to others, because others want what you have. So that gives you more confusion.
I think one of the turning points for me was to really make a decision to leave Wall Street completely. And that decision happened during the MBA exam, which is called GMAT in US. During the exam, I realized I don't want to pass this exam, I don't want to go through this.
So I left the exam in the middle. I blindly checked the boxes to just finish it off, ran away from the exam center. And I remember my father was traveling in Canada. His flight was about to take off from Toronto to New York. And he called my mom asking, "How was his exam?" And she said, "He's not happy with the exam. He said he doesn't want to continue with this."
So that was, I know a heartbreaking moment for my Indian parents who didn't have immense wealth or anything like that. They are very simple people. So they obviously were counting that I will join one of these outlets of being in America and build a life. And when I saw their face, they looked sad and disappointed. They didn't let me feel that pain though. And I'll always be grateful to them for this.
Because a few years ago when my sister passed away who was studying to be a doctor, she was about to become a dentist in a few years, and she passed away. And I remember telling my father that I will switch from accounting to medical. And he said, "Why?" And I said, "Because I know you wanted her to be a doctor," or she wanted to be a doctor. "Now you won't have a doctor in the family, and I'm willing to go for it." And he said, "I appreciate you saying this, but you should do what you want to do. There's no doubt you'll become a good doctor." So I don't know if he meant it or if he was just telling me that, "You will be a good doctor, but I don't want you to be a doctor if you don't want to. And if you are emotional right now, you don't need to act on that emotion. It's fine."
And I'm glad he said that, because I was willing to switch from accounting to doctor, and I would have been an equally frustrated accountant and a doctor if I had chosen to become any of those. Anyway, I left Wall Street and then I started to explore spirituality as a profession.
Now here's an important point. Why do you think someone who was since high school till the college time, even after graduation, was so obsessed with finance, accounting, and he ended up changing everything? Why do you think that happened? Because what I was hustling and running after was a goal. Goal to become successful, goal to fit into the society. A goal to be praised, validated, approved by others. A goal where I could receive the applause. A goal where I could be seen as a successful man. I was doing it for all the wrong reasons.
And when I switched from accounting to spirituality, unfortunately many of these narratives still stayed with me. The narrative had become even more sensitive. The need to be seen as successful was even stronger. The need to be validated by others became even more stronger, because now I'm not in finance, but I'm in a game where my lineage has a higher benchmark, a very high benchmark for me to match. And I constantly hustled to live up to that benchmark. And even though I knew I have a unique path, easier said than done.
It took me so many years to realize I'm doing this for the wrong reasons. My reasons are to please my father, please my guru, my teacher. And if you had heard my first episode on this podcast, it was about gratitude.
I remember when my book had a very low pre-release sale, I broke down in tears and my only complaint was I failed my father, who's my teacher. I failed Deepak Chopra who endorsed the book. I failed Dalai Lama, who wrote the forward of my book.
So I felt like a failure. And the reason why I wanted the book to be successful so that these three teachers feel proud of me, these three teachers feel happy to see the book they supported is doing well.
Clearly, I was doing things for wrong reasons, because the goals could take shape of spirituality, relationship, professional growth. But as long as the goal exists, your happiness will not exist.
And I'm telling you this as a guide, teacher, friend, get out of the goal mindset. And switch into the intention mindset. Intention, as I described in the beginning of the episode, it's the conscious desire of your soul. Why do you exist? That's the bottom line of this intention.
You don't exist to please family. You don't exist to fit in. You don't exist to make others happy. Although when you live your highest potential, others become happy, because you radiate a certain courage and truth.
The Leela teaching of tantra says, life does not have a purpose, life is a purpose. Because you may switch from the corporate game, to yoga game, to tantra game, but they all are games at the end of the day, if you don't know the consciousness of it.
So I switched from Wall Street game to the tantra game, not realizing I'm carrying the same baggage to the tantra as well, to the spirituality as well. So although many people praised me, some people from finance doubted my decision, "You're so young, you shouldn't be doing this. You're so doing so well in finance." But there were other people who were just numb at my decision. "Why would you leave such a great bank and do something that sounds so bizarre for a 22-year-old?" But I just felt that's the only thing I want to do. It is like a relationship. This is it. It has reached an expiry date. It cannot be renewed anymore.
So while I was carrying the same baggage to spirituality and I was still aware about the Sankalpa, and yet the application of it in practical terms wasn't coming to its true reality, it's very recent that I have started to integrate and live the Sankalpa in a deeper way.
And I hope this brings you some relief and some breakthrough that it takes time. You have to have patience. You have to have self-compassion. I was always very harsh on myself for not living up to my goals, for not living up to the standard I had set for myself. It took me a lot of coaching, spiritual guidance, inner work to understand, I'm doing this for the wrong reason. I'm here to deliver a message that only I can. And you are here to deliver a message to paint a blank canvas that only you can. No one else can do that. But for that to happen, you have to invite patience, trust, self-compassion.
The best way to understand intention is to look at yourself as a seed, and ask yourself how as a seed you will nurture, grow, and bloom. How as a seed, you will feel more supported, you will feel more stronger.
Often when the seed doesn't grow, the problem is in the soil, the way it's planted. And many times, you can take the seeds and plant to a different soil. Take care of it differently, the seed will grow. Many times the fault is not in the gardener or in the seed. The fault is in the soil, where it's been grown.
Sometimes I agree the gardener doesn't know what he's doing, and he shouldn't be given the responsibility to plant the seeds. But seed rarely has a power to change the gardener, just like we rarely have the power to change who took care of us, right? Our loved ones, family, parents, teachers, friends, romantic partners. Many people showed up as our gardeners. Some of them didn't know what they were doing, some of them knew only half of it.
But as the seed becomes aware of its own needs and desires, you do have the capacity to uproot and shift to a different environment. The kind of environment that can nurture you. Withdraw yourself from places, humans and experiences where you are not heard, seen, or understood fully.
We all have interesting traumas, patterns in our family, in our culture. Understand your pattern, understand what you continue to do accidentally, subconsciously. Understand what influences your choices, what influences your definition of success, failure, relationships, because that's where your intention is hidden. It's hidden in the conversations, confessions that you are avoiding. It's hidden in subconscious layer of your mind that you are hesitant to open, to explore.
So one of the classic examples of intention that I always give, intention to move forward with calmness, courage, and clarity, the triple C. Because there is rarely a problem in life that cannot be solved with calmness, courage, and clarity. The point is the more you understand your needs, your actual needs, the more clear you will become in your intention. And let me take a moment to describe the difference between your actual need and the needs you may have right now.
So your actual need might be to move to let's say California or a different city. Your actual need might be to get out of a relationship, leave the job. But the need you are talking about is to be in a city where you are expected to be the hometown. Maybe the need you're talking about is the need to support your partner while they are going through their journey, but your journeys are not matching anymore. Maybe the current need you're talking about is to be in this job because of X, Y, Z reasons, but your actual need is to leave this, but you're living that job because of family, society, pressure, and so on.
There is so much evidence, scientific, psychological, where we replace our actual needs with the needs of our parents, especially our parents. We do that with our partners and society, but the parent's need become our need because we are biologically and spiritually, energetically so ingrained with them, so entangled with them.
You will forget your actual need when you spend a lot of time with their energy or you spend a lot of internal space with them. So you may not even have to be in the same city or home to be in that space. If you are not clear about your actual need, if you don't do enough inner work to know your actual needs, their needs will become your needs. So you may be getting married, having kids, being in a job, being in a particular city, wearing certain kind of clothes, hanging out in a certain kind of space. All of them you're doing on an automated level. That's not your actual need. That's where the intention work is hidden, knowing your actual needs. What brings you safety, what brings you joy? What feels aligned to you? Who are you if you are not part of your family? Who are you if you drop your last name? Who are you beyond your religion, beyond your culture? Get to know yourself through a stream of consciousness. I'll share some examples where the seed in you can find more strength.
So intention of calmness, courage, clarity is powerful. Intention to move forward with self-trust is very powerful. Intention to be playful and creative every day and every way is powerful.
And I recommend once you become a little more clear about your intentions, write them down. Write a lot about them, feel them fully. And when a certain part of your writing feels absolutely inspiring and convincing, record that in your voice and listen to it, on your walk, before sleeping so that your subconscious fully understands this is my intention, this is why I'm here.
I'll share a few examples how you can strengthen the journey of your intention setting. Writing, I already shared. Writing will help you to speak to your taboo self, your hidden self. Consistently do it. Journal writing, stream of consciousness, writing, even writing an idle scene from your life and going deep into it.
When you meditate, visualize yourself as a seed or in a space where you are living those feelings, where you're living those experiences, and see how that feels. A visual meditation has the capacity to make your body, mind, nervous system, feelings really live that experience. You could even put a background music that gives you that high, because a creative visualization meditation becomes even more powerful with some music in the background. Go for the full show.
Okay, number two, know your creative expression. Our bodies and our energy, they become so tight, so shrink in their expression, that we keep repeating the same patterns unknowingly. We keep sticking to the same habits that are not serving us. We keep showing up at the places where we feel hurt. And that's because we don't know our creative outlets. We don't know what brings us playfulness.
Figure out your creative expression. Is it painting? Is it writing? Is it dancing? Is it teaching something out of fun that has nothing to do with your business? Is it learning something for fun that has nothing to do with your business? Your creative expression will heal your inner child, and your inner child needs your attention. Number three, walks in the nature.
If there is something I've consistently done, it's the walk in the nature. If I'm not able to do it for a few days, I start to starve. I start to feel the frustration. Wherever I travel, I walk. I invest in the shoes, the jacket, the outfit which makes me feel cozy and comfortable, because I know walking is such a healing ritual for me.
I invest in headphones. Although I recommend you don't need to put on headphones all the time, many times, just a beautiful walk with no music, no podcast is so healing. But I get it, many times you want to listen to something. Maybe you are listening to my podcast while walking, and I do that too, but I also try not to listen all the time.
So yeah, walks in the nature will be so powerful, because they help you realize things you don't know. They help you become open and available to nature's guidance and wisdom.
As you go through this journey, your dreams will start to change. Maybe you will dream of some weird stuff. You'll dream of a lot of interesting stuff. Many people start to either dream some really weird stuff, such as seeing urine, toilet, public toilets being filthy.
And what does it mean? It means life is telling you clean the shit in your life. Okay? It's not a negative dream. The subconscious is telling you, "This is the reality, let's clean it."
Sometimes you see your pet, sometimes you see an old one, an old family member. These dreams mean affection. You need support, you need companionship. You need some warmth, so be open to it. The dream analysis will become so important as you navigate this journey.
Next point is conscious conversations. Be part of community. Speak to people where you feel supported, seen, and heard, with no judgments, no criticism, where you find your safety and validation. And if you need a community, I do encourage you to explore Tantra Tribe. It's the safe, cozy, conscious community where we gather, we speak once a month. I curate content based on your needs, your challenges. It is not overwhelming. It is done in a very playful, easy manner. It's the second month of Tantra Tribe right now.
So members are joining in, they're having fun. And every month for a few days, we open up the community for you to join. It's a no-brainer investment. Currently, it's at $27 per month. We started with founding members who joined for lifetime, and there are more than 60 of those. You can be a monthly member. You can cancel whenever you want.
If my work and words resonate with you, you would love Tantra Tribe. And if you need a deeper support, I encourage you to email me at info@leelagurukul.com and ask for the mastermind options. Mastermind is my first group coaching container where we speak four times a month and we go deep into individual healing, collective healing. Lots of discussions on tantra, goddess energy, meditations, sexual healing, sexual freedom, emotional freedom, creative freedom, all the stuff that you can expect from me.
But without a conscious community, without a conscious space, it will become so challenging to navigate the journey of intention. I hope all of this makes sense. And now, we will begin a short meditation for you to just deepen this intention practice. If you're driving or walking, I only suggest you to be mindful and aware of the surroundings. If you can wait, pause the audio here and use the next few minutes to just sit anywhere. The meditation will be short. Thank you for listening.
You may close your eyes. Breathe in. Breathe out at your pace. Relax your body. And at your pace, notice the sounds you're hearing right now in between the sounds. Notice the silence. And notice your awareness, the life energy, the creative energy you are, the conscious energy you are.
This conscious energy is your life force. Imagine this life force in a color, in a beautiful, gentle form, expanding on your heart, making your heart warmer, safer.
As you connect to the heart, take a deep breath in, hold it for a moment. And as you exhale, let go of the self-doubt, the fear that limits you. Inhale, hold, and let go of the fear and self-doubt that controls your mind.
One more time, breathe in, pull the breath, and exhale.
Relax with your body, with your breathing. And remember to know your life purpose. You need to know who you are. When you know who you are, you don't need to chase any idea of success. When you know who you are, you embody your energy to live your playful passion, to live your highest self that aligns with your inner child, that aligns with your deeper joy.
Breathe, witness, and let this light expand on your heart. To deepen this light, to deepen this sacred energy on the heart. I'll begin a mantra, receive the mantra. And with each repetition of the mantra, breathe deeply, and be open to your sacred intention. Be open and available to that grand scheme of universe for you.
Soham Namaha, I am aware of my awareness. Soham Namaha I realize life does not have a purpose. Life is a purpose. The more I show up for my life, the more I live my purpose.
Soham Namaha I move forward with self-trust and self-compassion. Soham Namaha I cultivate courage, calmness, and clarity every day in every way.
And now, you may place your hands on the heart, acknowledge how far you have come in your life, how deep you have gone in your healing. Take this moment to honor the daily consciousness, the sacred, wild feminine within you and around you.
Take this moment to honor the universe for guiding you, for supporting you. And at your pace, breathe, relax, and continue to be in this energy and solitude for next few minutes.
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