From Shadows to Light: Path to Freedom
In this episode of The Leela Show, Chandresh embarks on a journey from the shadows of the past to the radiant light of freedom. He shares personal stories of women who have navigated through the darkness of suppression and control, often overshadowed by the daunting presence of oppressive forces. These narratives shed light on the struggles and illuminate the resilience and courage it takes to step into self-expression and autonomy. The episode talks about:
Breaking Free: How does it reshape one's identity and life's purpose?
Healing Insights: The transformative healing processes that enable one to mend the soul and reclaim inner peace.
Steps to Freedom: Discovering the actionable steps to cultivate a life of freedom, focusing on severing ties with one’s painful past and embracing a future filled with possibilities.
-
I want to talk about freedom. It's not freedom to become this or that. But it's the freedom that cultivates as a state of your being. It's the kind of freedom that becomes your reality, your identity from the time you were born, you were born as free, pure, infinite consciousness. You brought in infinite possibilities with you. You were not here accidentally.
But somehow we forget our message because people pleasing cultural conflicts, suppression confusion, fear. All of that takes the front seat and your free playful creative self-expression takes the backseat and somewhere in this entire time of growing up, you forget about freedom. It becomes a fancy idea that only finds light in poetry and spiritual podcaster or books.
Today. I wish to talk about freedom that doesn't scream loud but becomes a part of your breathing every day in every way, you radiate freedom as you show up for yourself and for others. And if this kind of freedom feels exciting to you, you may enjoy this episode and stay till the end. I am Chandresh Bhardwaj and this is the Leila show.
Now must to everyone. I hope you're feeling easy, cozy and grounded today, this episode has to begin with this story that not only inspired this episode but so much more than just this episode. And you'll know this by the time this episode, this conversation ends, now, I have to share a trigger warning. The story does contain moment of physical and verbal abuse.
I will try to be as compassionate as possible and as calm as possible while I narrate this story. So hopefully you will feel the strength, the hope as you listen to this story. And if it doesn't make you comfortable, you may want to skip the story. The story is of a 7 to 10 year old boy living in a tiny little town in India, surrounded with hundreds of these little houses.
Every house had a story. The story was of suppression, silence and abuse, verbal abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse every evening, his heart rate would start to change because he knows any time. Now the screams of these women will start to come to his ears. The women who are mothers, sisters, daughters, wives, being beaten by the drunk men, drunk fathers, drunk husbands, drunk sons, beating their mother.
He would hear these voices almost every evening, not just from one house but multiple houses surrounding him. Now he is 7 to 10 year old. He would feel hopeless, helpless, restless and scared because these are the men who get drunk every evening. Now the crazy part is next morning, this boy will go to his school and he would watch these women doing the daily morning stuff and their face would look just as if nothing happened the night before and as if nothing will happen a few hours from now, when the sun sets again, it made him wonder, have these women accepted the daily abuse as their reality as their core identity. It obviously started changing the way he understood masculinity. He, the way he understood alcohol, the way he understood relationships around him.
Now, that little boy is me and that became my daily reality to see these women going through these challenges every day. And now I can even tell you it wasn't just the woman going through the challenges. The men were also going through their challenges because why would you get drunk and beat your own mother? What gets into your head to beat your mother? What gets into your head to beat the woman around you because you're beating yourself up every day in such harsh ways.
I left India after high school and I got to know many of those men didn't live long. Some of them died of drinking too much alcohol, you know, getting into a car accident, road accident or some or the other thing happened and they passed away before they even, you know, moved into their prime age.
Now, one night in her house next door, this particular young man, he was drunk and he was meeting his mother and that was a very daily occurrence. It got pretty ugly that night. My uncle who was, an officer in Indian Air Force, tough guy, you know, and he knew discipline. He was very much disciplined ethical guy. He heard the noises and he didn't live in the town. His job was, you know, posted far, far away from the city. But he was at home that night, he heard the sounds, he heard the noises.
He stepped out got into their house, disciplined that young drunk man that this is not how you will live. This is not how you can continue to do things. You're not allowed to be this abusive, this violent. I felt proud of him. And I also felt the woman who is, by the way, you know, she was working as a registered nurse in the government hospital. I thought she must be feeling so safe and so protected by the community. But guess what happened next day? She stopped speaking to her entire house like she just stopped speaking to everyone.
Now, when I look back at that incident, it makes me think, why would you stop talking? Why would you get annoyed or pissed off at people who stop your abuse? Psychologically, speaking, of course, there is a lot going on there but my little child mind it's still confused. Why would you do this? It makes me wonder when you accept your cage as your home, no one can free you unless you want to be free, unless you feel ready to be saved from that cage. And when you want to be free, you don't even need someone to rescue you or to save you because you gather enough courage and clarity to get out of there.
If you are surrounded in a cage that feels like home. I'm praying for you. I'm sending you love strength and permission to get the heck out of there because you can, you know, you can sometimes you just need a nudge. And I hope this message shows up as the nudge.
I believe these kind of experiences impacted me so deeply because till this date, I have not tried a drop of alcohol. I believe, I think it must have been till high school whenever I would hear about alcohol or I would be around someone who drinks alcohol. My body will go through a moment of just deep fear and anxiety like very, very deep fear and anxiety, no man in my family drinks. So I felt safe within the family. But when I would go out, you know, in social gatherings and if when I see the sight of alcohol, it would just give me a deep rush of fear and deep, deep anxiety.
One of my best friends in school, I remember visiting his house and his father was an advocate and I saw him pouring a drink in the glass and I got so scared I was like now he's going to beat someone up but he didn't, he had his, you know, little sips and he went into his reading room and I was like, wow, so he's not beating anyone. He's not yelling, shouting. That was obviously a new lesson for me. That just because you're drinking, that doesn't mean you'll start beating everyone. But for a long time, I think in college that changed, completely changed. But in high school, middle school, that was just a straight source of fear and anxiety for me.
But fast forward to that moment in the little town in India when I was, you know, under the age of eight or nine. Now, I'm in college. I'm studying in, this is year 2004. I'm in a business school in New York and I thought this is such a big city. There will be much more safety, compassion, freedom, self-expression and everything. And sure New York does offer you plenty of sites of self-expression. But I also saw a different level of suppression in New York.
One of them was hundreds and thousands of people on a daily basis going to a job that makes them unhappy, that makes them angry. One of the early morning sights in the New York train station was one hand is holding a cigarette, other hand holding a coffee, it was cigarette or coffee combination or bagel and coffee bagel and cigarette and no one looked happy on those mornings. And I thought maybe this is what the reality is and perhaps this is why I got brainwashed or conditioned. Brainwash is not the right word, conditioned or programmed to simply follow that route. Even though I could feel this is not where I belong.
Jay Krishna Murti, the Indian philosopher and teacher puts it so beautifully. It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. But you see the point is you could be in a tiny town in India where drunk men are beating women, they're beating themselves or you could be in metro New York where it appears to be free, but no one is free. Either there is alcohol, there is capitalism, there is your own programming holding you back, limiting you changing your entire story in the head and you don't know you have accepted the cage as the home.
And the first fundamental moment in your healing is recognizing your cage. What is it? How does it look? How does it limit you? How has it programmed you this inner work of knowing your cage, knowing your limitations, knowing the stories, knowing the thoughts, memories, identities that limit you haunt you. It's worth all the effort because the benefits are super delicious, super amazing.
I'm going to share some of the benefits. Hopefully to motivate you to show up for the work that life requires. Life wants you to do. One of the first benefit is you enter into your creative, spiritual and sensual era. Your creative era is your self-expression era where you express yourself unapologetically, the spiritual era is where you start to experience your much more than your thoughts, much more than your body, much more than how others have defined you.
And the sensual era is when you start experiencing life through all the senses, listening, smelling, touching, loving or feeling things, sensuality is so reduced to sexualization of everything. But the truth is, it's much more than that. Sensuality is about fully living the present moment.
When you do this inner work, you will experience a greater sense of safety, groundedness and inner security. Safety is an important ingredient. When you're feeling safe, secure, grounded, you can truly expand into yourself. When you're not safe, you are in a survival mode. You will act from a place of defense. You will act from a place of reaction. Your ego will drive you and that's a space of feeling confined. So safety, groundedness, security are very important ingredients that I have witnessed, helps people expand into who they are. When you do this inner work, you begin to experience much more freedom. Freedom of creativity, freedom of expression, freedom of self-awareness. It's a beautiful, beautiful moment.
It's a life-changing moment. It truly is when you truly experience yourself, the way you experience when you're like free, full of creativity and life. When you expand into your authentic self, when you embrace your freedom, you are in a state of bliss. You are in a state of peace and flow. That's a beautiful moment and if you don't resonate with all of this, then you may try practicing some of the following practices. Some of them are simple practices like observing your breath for five minutes, meditation is one of them.
Meditation is much more than a technique, it's a way of being. When you meditate, you're not just focusing your attention. You're also witnessing your thoughts. You're witnessing how the mind jumps from one thought to another, one feeling to another. And you're being, you're being, you're not focusing. You're simply being.
You can also focus on shadows, working with shadows, acknowledging your deepest fears and your inner demons and really acknowledging that inner work is really transformative. You can also set a clear intention, why are you showing up for your own freedom? Why are you showing up to be more creative? Why are you showing up to express yourself? Setting a clear intention is very powerful.
And finally, when you take action, remember action without awareness is karma. Action with awareness is living. So let your actions be guided by your clarity, your intentions and your awareness. Enjoy the process. Have fun, let your inner child come out to play and have fun with the entire process.
You have what it takes to be free. I believe in you. I trust you. And if you are feeling a little constrained or a little confused, know that you have support. You have a community of people who believe in freedom just like you and who are cheering for you. You can always reach out. You can find support in various forms, therapists, coaches, mentors, friends. So reach out and stay in the process of discovering yourself. Thank you so much for being here. It was my absolute pleasure to share these words with you. Have a beautiful day and see you soon.
-
