Episode Transcript

Celibacy is the practice of not having sex when you have access to it, but you choose to reject or deny it. That's celibacy. Some people abstain from all kinds of sexual contact including kissing, holding hands or even hugging. Some people refrain from only sexual intercourse.

Some people only prefer masturbation or some people give up that too. Humans define celibacy and sexual experience in their own unique way. Recently celibacy started trending heavily on social media and when you go deeper into it, there were some interesting facts that started revealing.

One of them was exhaustion, stress and anger of most people from using the dating apps. They were exhausted, disappointed and just not interested in the hookup culture anymore. Some people started indulging in it as an experiment. Some people said they started feeling more empowerment, more sexual independence by practicing it.

And some people are simply trusting their favorite influencer on social media. In this episode, we are going to explore celibacy through the lens of traditional tantra. I hope you find this episode helpful, inspiring, hopeful and maybe it'll leave you with some practical practices to raise your sexual health, to raise your awareness and to raise your creative courage.

I am Chandresh Bhardwaj, and this is Leela Gurukul. Namaste everyone. I hope you're feeling happy, relaxed, grounded, safe wherever you are. Before we get into today's episode, three announcements. Number one, we have Navratri happening this month, September 24th to October 4th, 2022 is the Navratri.

Navratri is the nine nights of divine feminine celebration. The celebration of the goddess energy in the tantra traditions. It's highly auspicious, really powerful festival to honor, invoke the divine energy within you. In the Leela Gurukul space, we discuss and dive very deep into the goddess energy.

And I have recorded a full video explaining the auspiciousness of Navratri, how you can maximize the benefit of it and how you can practice it not just for this Navratri, but every Navratri that happens four times a year. How do you access the video? If you are on the Leela Gurukul newsletter, you will get the video automatically.

Every month, we are trying to release and create free content that's available only to the newsletter subscribers. If you're not on it do to visit leelagurukul.com, subscribed to the newsletter because we are working hard to create some hardcore beautiful tantra content for you.

Number two, the applications for The Conscious Meditation Program are open. It's because of this program that the podcast has been sponsor free from day one, and it will always be sponsor free because I do believe we'll continue to get applicants for The Conscious Meditation Program and all other programs that we will offer.

And as you know, it's a tantra based 12-week meditation program. We go deeper into healing mantra, primordial meditations and so much more. Do explore the program on the website and apply. Okay. When you apply you and I will have a Zoom call, which only decides if I'm the right fit for you.

And if you are really going to maximize and enjoy the process of the conscious meditation. And the final announcement, I do have a Telegram text community, which is free for everyone. It's because of this community that this episode became really what it is going to be because everyone from the Telegram community sent some really good questions.

And I didn't even have to go too deep into deciding what I should be talking about celibacy. So this is gratitude to the Telegram texting community. If you're not on it, do join. Again, the link is in the show notes, also on my Instagram @cbmeditates. Let's get into the episode now.

As I shared, celibacy has been trending on social media. What makes it so attractive? Why people are excited, interested, inclined toward it. Now we have to understand one thing, we live in a very hypersexual society. We have always suppressed sex. I feel when you go back to the ancient times, you may find some evidence that people were more sexually free.

They were more okay with intimacy. They were more expressive, but I feel as we became more and more so called civilized society, we started suppressing our rawness. And when we started suppressing that raw energy, then human body, sexual energy, emotions, they started to get some interesting attraction.

I mean, it doesn't surprise me when somebody shares a reel or a TikTok clip of them crying or being vulnerable it goes viral. And that's why a lot of people have started to film themselves when they cry or when they're emotional, because the chances of it going viral is so strong.

Why would someone crying on phone screen would go viral and they're recording themselves? Why it would go viral? Because we have suppressed the basic vulnerability so much that even looking at a human being crying, it looks interesting to the human mind. And that's so sad because crying, laughing, expressing love, expressing pain, it's a natural emotion.

But we have been trying so hard and so much to look and behave in a certain civilized way that these emotions suddenly become too attractive and they go viral. This is why the standard of what we call beauty continues to change depending on the media narrative.

Go back to the newspapers 70 years ago, you'll see a different kind of human beauty standard and now it's different. And it will again go through a change in the next 30, 40 years. It always changes depending on what's acceptable, what's trending in the media and it is a sad situation, but that's what we got to change.

And I'm not someone who believes that we can change the entire world. I believe let's start with changing yourself, lead with example and yeah, then rest of it will follow, but just work on yourself first. Lead with example and hopefully your vibe will attract the right tribe and the change will start to happen.

Now celibacy feels attractive. The idea of it feels attractive because we live in this sexually suppressed, but also sexually indulgent society. I grew up in India. I completed my high school there and then I moved to New York. And that was obviously a very interesting age.

I left India as a teenager and I noticed two very interesting things, observations. In India, I noticed a lot of conservative attitude around sex, intimacy. And also I didn't come from Mumbai or New Delhi. I was in a very small town. Everyone knows everyone there. So obviously the PDA wasn't, I mean, it didn't exist honestly.

A different kind of PDA existed, which I call public display of awareness. So that was a lot of spiritual teachers. I grew up among and around many spiritual teachers. So I definitely saw a lot of PDA, but that was public display of awareness, not affection, but there is affection in awareness, obviously.

Anyway, I've said the joke of this podcast. Now I can move into the topic deeper. So I moved from India to New York and in New York I saw opposite of what we would say a conservative attitude, right? There was free casual sex available everywhere. There was PDA happening everywhere.

So I, as a teenager, that obviously fascinated me. And as I started going deeper into tantra as a student, I also noticed both are problems. Suppressing it is a problem. Being so casual about it is also a problem. And your mind, your body, your emotions, they're constantly telling you that, that it is a problem.

And talking about celibacy, liking the idea of it, experimenting with it is not so different than running behind casual sex. And stay with me, I'll explain. The reason why you feel so attracted towards sex is because we were never trained, taught or made to love and understand our sexual energy.

It was always either too glamorous or a sinful thing. So we always kind of avoided it. It always became a very secret thing. It's still a very personal, very secret thing. And I'm not saying it should not be secret, but it became secret in a dark way. So when you come across a spiritual teacher, a spiritual philosophy that says sex is wrong, it's leading you in the wrong directions.

Suddenly it starts to feel like, okay, this might be a good thing because I know my sexual energy isn't serving me too well. I'm constantly chasing it. The more I have it, the more I want it. And just to want it, I do random things. I choose the wrong partners. So this teacher is saying it's bad.

So this sounds good. Let me try it. It's almost like how we are tired of running behind money. We are overworking, making very less money. We are angry, exhausted with our jobs and when a spiritual philosophy or teacher shows up and says, "Money is bad. Wealth is bad. If you become wealthy, you'll be corrupted."

And that idea feels seductive because if we don't understand the energy of money, so when someone says and starts calling money sinful, your mind says, "Okay, let me try it." And that's where things go wrong. We shouldn't be trying something simply because we are exhausted or we don't understand the root of what we are trying. All right.

So number one thing here to understand is if you are simply choosing to be celibate because your sexual experiences have been terrible, then this is not a good enough reason to experiment with celibacy. You got to have a clear why. As you know, I'm a big believer advocate of a why. It doesn't matter what you do.

If there is no clear why, then everything you're doing is going to collapse at some point. Now there is a lot of evidence that the ancientries or sages in the Eastern traditions, they used to practice celibacy, but there is something that's tantric celibacy and there's something that's a religious celibacy.

And both are very different, my friend. Now religious celibacy is based on faith. It tells you very clearly sex, pleasure, fun is terrible. It's bad. It's sinful. It's gateway to hell and you shouldn't indulge in it. And that pretty much becomes the basis of that celibacy.

Are there any benefits of it? I'm not sure, but I'm sure there must be some people who gained some insight from the experience. Why I do not encourage it so much? Because it's not coming from your experience. You are simply blindly following a cultural narrative, a religious narrative.

And it's not even telling you to experiment and then decided for yourself. It's clearly based on an order, an authority. Not a big fan of that. What is tantric celibacy then? Tantric celibacy is all about understanding your sexual energy. And if it involves indulging in it first and then understanding, because that's usually or naturally how it would happen.

That's what a tantric celibacy would recommend. That's what a tantric celibacy would unfold and turn out to be. A tantric teacher will not tell you to straight away believe anything. Tantra is not for believers. It has never been for believers. It's for those who are willing to experiment.

It's for those who are embracing their divineness. There is a temple in India, in a place called Khajuraho. I've spoken about it, written about it in my book as well, Break The Norms. Khajuraho is very interesting temple. You should look it up online.

The structure of the building is so beautiful by the way to look at, but when you go closer, there are erotic pictures, art made around the temple, and it's not surface level lovemaking art. It's extremely intense, passionate, deep lovemaking sculptures. But when you go in the temple, it's nothing there. It's just there's not even a picture or statue, I believe.

Why is it made that way? That's a tantra temple and that's what a tantra pathway is. That on the outside, there could be all pleasure, passion, fun, lovemaking, but as you go deeper within all that remains is Aham Brahmasmi, which means, I am an extension of universe. And universe is an extension of me.

Khajuraho temple used to be like a must to visit place for the tantra students. I encourage my students to go there. I go there very often, because it's just a beautiful reminder, symbolism, but also an experience that you could look at a beautiful woman, but it doesn't have to invoke lust in you.

The day you start admiring a woman for who she is, for her existence, the lust will take a backseat. And the love is going to multiply to a level that you cannot imagine. There is an instant experience of higher awareness in that kind of exchange.

The problem is the moment we think of a human that you find attractive, any gender, certainly you think of that person or that gender itself. You start to have sexual thoughts. This is the level of suppression we live in. I'm going to talk about the solutions, but I first want to focus on the fundamentals, the foundation of the celibacy.

So that if you even want to practice it, you should not be practicing because you are tired, exhausted from the dating apps. You should first of all explore, why am I chasing a relationship on the dating app, right? Why I'm chasing a relationship to begin with, not just on the dating app.

I encourage that you first experience how you relate to yourself. Every day write in your journal, how do I relate to myself? And it's absolutely okay and normal to relate to yourself in a different way every day. And as you start to get comfortable with this relating, then expand it to your friends, your family, your partner.

And then when you come across someone you really love romantically, sexually, ask yourself, how do I relate to this person now? We have made relationships so rigid. So possessive. So controlling. So extremely well defined that there's barely a space for them to breathe.

And when you are in that kind of extreme suppression, then I'm not surprised that you would only think of celibacy as the outcome. So either you indulge in it too much, or you decide to abstain from it. Both are terrible. Both do not lead anywhere. You've got to first build a relationship with yourself.

Because if you are simply jumping into celibacy, the suppression is going to build so much that it will have a volcanic eruption. I've shared a story around celibacy. I'm not going to repeat it here. It's on this podcast in the previous episodes on lust and other similar episodes, where anytime you jump into celibacy without much reflection, it actually turns ugly.

It gets really bad, really worse before you realize that, okay, I just messed up. I was much better not practicing celibacy. Now that I'm doing it, it's gotten even terrible. Now this episode is basically based around the questions that were sent on the Telegram app, and I'm going to pick up specific questions now.

One of the question was, is celibacy for a youngster suggested? And they were talking about someone who's above 18, below 25-ish kind of space. Whatever age you are in, I want you to look at your life between this age group that I mentioned, let's say 18 to 25.

You would notice that in this age, for most of you, you could eat anything and your stomach will digest it, right? But as you start to age, you would notice that even if you have one extra bread, even if you indulge in one frappuccino, your stomach is going to remind you for a bunch of hours that you just made a huge mistake.

And I'm going to punish you for it for the next, minimum, 24 to 48 hours. Why that happens? Because as you're aging, your digestion capacity, it reduces, right? Simple science. It's similar with the sexual energy. When you are young, when you are healthy, young blood, you could indulge in anything.

You could eat any kind of food. You could jump from here to there. You'll get bruises. You'll bleed. You'll be fine eventually. Any hurt, you have the ability to heal it. That's just the youthfulness. It's just the life, the prana that you are in. Prana means the life force.

The life force in a young body and soul, it's just powerful. The prana has the ability to go deeper into any kind of experiences and still recover. So the answer is I do not recommend a youngster should be practicing celibacy unless and until they are in a monastery, until and unless they have absolutely clear reasons for it and they're working with someone qualified.

Because if they are young and they're practicing it, it may mess up their journey at later years of life. It's almost like saying that when kids are two to five year old, should I be taking away their toys? Because what if they become adult and they still playing with the same teddy bear.

When kids are two year old, when they're babies, they are supposed to play with silly toys. They're supposed to be silly, crying, grumpy, truthful, but as they grow up, they don't care about the toys. And it's not because the toy has suddenly become ugly. It's only because those humans are not babies anymore.

They are grown up adults and they don't find the toy attractive. So if a spiritual teacher, religion, a philosophy shows up and tells you that your child should not be playing with this toy because it's just not good to play with toys as adults, that's just wrong teaching.

So as a youngster, I would recommend it's time to play, make mistakes, understand yourself, live unapologetically, but also understand your emotions. It's the age of learning. If you don't indulge, if you don't make mistakes, you will not learn. Don't play things so safe, that you haven't really gone into the university of life.

Let life teach you. Go through some heartbreaks. Go through some mistakes. Experience life without money. Experience life without friendship sometimes. You don't have to fit in. You can be unconventional. You can be just who you are. So the answer is, yeah, explore your prana.

If you indulge in sexual experiences, then also indulge in deeper friendships, indulge in deeper creative outlets. And stay with me till then, because I do want to suggest something for just the super youngsters here. All right. Now another beautiful question was how to handle celibacy in a committed relationships.

Can it destroy or heal relationships? What if one partner wants to be celibate and the other does not? Now celibacy is absolutely possible in a committed relationships. I know actually a bunch of couples who are practicing conscious sexual experiences, conscious celibacy, but again, it should happen organically.

If you are in a committed relationship, first of all, for yourself, discover the why of it. Why are you interested in it? Why it is relevant, essential and important for you to indulge in celibacy. Once you have your reasons figured out, then share it with your partner. Make it an exciting thing to practice.

Don't make it something that's intense, heavy and it's sort of a punishment for your partner. Don't make it negative, make it playful. And when you are going through the celibacy time, plan something more fun. Plan something that could be even better than orgasm.

And I do believe there could be things that are more delicious and better than orgasm. So explore that part of your life. It could be gardening, writing, meditating, hiking, cooking. Could be writing a script for a movie. I'm just randomly throwing pieces at you. You got to experiment.

You don't and should not be taking my word here. You should be experimenting with it. But I do feel if and when a couple starts to practice conscious celibacy it could change your life completely for good. It could elevate your awareness, your collective intention, your collective harmony in such powerful ways.

And I'm not saying you should never come back to experiencing sex. You should, but also experiment with what happens when sex is not the only way for us to express love. And there could be much more way that can go beyond a few days. And if they still do not agree, if they're still not willing to practice with you, then obviously, then it's a relationship talk.

Then you got to have different conversations. Then maybe it also reflects in other aspects of your life together. It may be also reflecting in how you look at new business, a job, raising a child and other important things in your relationship. So explore it. Next question was, can celibacy be temporary or does it have to be for life?

That's a personal choice. First of all, no one is after you to practice it for life or even for short term. Some people do practice for life. When I have met those people, I have seen a lot of anger in them because they don't realize when practicing celibacy becomes suppressing sexual energy.

And if there's no teacher, no guide and if they're simply doing it for wrong reasons, then it just makes them angry. It makes them resentful. And I do not recommend that, but I've also met people who have actually practiced celibacy for life and they look beautiful.

They have so much glow on their face. They have so much energy. And there's a reason for it that I'll talk, but yes, it is possible to practice it for life, but you don't have to if your why isn't leading you there. So you could simply practice it for three month, two month.

I do recommend whatever time you practice it for, stick to it. So let's say you practice it for one month, stick to one month. Do not indulge in anything for that one month. And that also reminds me to define celibacy for you. As I shared, people define it in their own way.

But if you want my suggestion, I would say, of course you should not refrain from holding hands, hugging someone. A hug, holding hand, a deep mindful conversation, being vulnerable with someone, that's okay. That's beautiful.

But you could experiment with maybe no masturbation, maybe no sexual intercourse. Yeah. Experiment with things that you find really arousing and then see what happens. It could be fun, could be really exciting to watch your prana flow. And one super important thing here would be documenting it.

You don't have to make videos and post it on reels, although I'm sure that's happening on social media everywhere, but document it for yourself just to track your energy level, just to track the creative levels, energy level, financial abundance level.

Because as I said, I'm going to share some interesting spiritual scientific stories behind it by the end of the episode, which we are going to end in another few minutes. But yeah, I would highly recommend you start documenting when you are on this celibacy phase.

Another question was, does celibacy differ for men and women? I feel this is such a good question because there is a very clear tantric perspective here. It is different for men and women. And the good news for a woman is a woman will be able to practice celibacy way easier than a man, because the sensuality of a woman is not just restricted or confined to a particular body part, right? It's everywhere.

That's why we mostly use the word playful, sensual for a woman then for a man, because a woman, when she's living her feminine element, when she's truly in her energy, in her element, she could experience sensuality everywhere. And you would notice the poet or even in the movies, they don't need to show the body of a woman to make it look sensual or sexy.

They could simply put the camera to her eyes and the audience will be just watching. And that includes woman audience as well, right? That's the magic, the beauty of a woman. She does not need to do too much because her sensuality is everywhere and she doesn't need to do anything extra to add that sensuality.

When a woman becomes simply her natural, effortless, feminine self she's attractive, sensual, that makes her the divine goddess that she is. So for her to practice celibacy is easy because for her, the release is not restricted to the sexual release. She can release her energy through so many ways.

She can create warmth for her children. She can be in her creative dancing, playful energy. She can be simply holding the space for herself or someone. She could be indulging in cooking, gardening, poetry. She could be doing so many things with that sexual energy building up.

And this is why whenever a woman has become enlightened or have gone deeper into any spiritual path, you may not see them speaking about it so much because they go deep. They are relaxed in that warm space. It's the womb space they are in and they don't need to indulge in any aggression leadership.

They don't need to compete with anyone. This is why I continue to request women, come back to your feminine self. You don't need to compete with men. Men need to learn from you, but you don't need to join the rat race of men.

And I see that happening in cities like New York, LA all the time, especially New York, honestly, because in Manhattan, you see that competition on such an interesting level. It's painful to watch that. And when I quit Wall Street, this was one of the reasons.

If you don't become another rat in the race, then you are nobody there. And I'd rather be a nobody in the spiritual space than in the Wall Street space. And by nobody, I mean, that nothingness, that shown energy, that we really invite in the spiritual practices.

Yeah. And for men, it's going to be a bit of challenge and difficult because for men, the natural instant gratification is mostly the sexual gratification. So the lovely men got to do some extra work when it comes to celibacy.

But I'm telling you, when men start to do this work to consciously take control and understand their sexual energy, they're going to discover so many new aspects of their existence. Patriarchy hurts everyone. Patriarchy has limited the joy, the playfulness of everyone.

So when a man steps in to do that work, the best thing that starts to happen is their warrior energy it multiplies. And I have to share this one word, it's called viriya in Sanskrit. Viriya means the male sperm. So they call it viriya. It's called viriya in Sanskrit. And viriya also means viriya energy. Viriya is the warrior energy.

And in the tantra traditions, this male sperm is associated with that viriya that's warrior energy. So when a man is able to practice that sperm retention, when they're able to understand that energy outlet and channel it to higher awareness, they become much more stronger emotionally, creatively, spiritually and financially.

Again, this is something for you to experiment and indulge in. If things work out in the future, I hope to have a community that's mainly working for the transmutation of this energy. It's a lot of work to start to create communities like these because safety is of such important level, but until then the podcast, the Telegram text space, Instagram will continue to use these outlets.

But yeah, I'm very interested and excited to see where this energy transmutation can take you if you actually work with it really, really well. Now there is one question that I've answered, but I'm going to say it here and maybe add a little bit more insight to it.

The question is what are good or right reasons to decide to be a celibate and what are bad or wrong reasons to practice celibacy? Now the bad or the wrong reason is, like I mentioned in the beginning, you are just angry and exhausted with the hookup culture, or you are not having the right kind of sex or the one you want to experience.

I feel it may not be a good enough reason to practice celibacy because it's coming from frustration. It's coming from reasons of maybe self doubt, maybe a chase you were indulged in and you don't reach anywhere with it. So these would be the wrong reasons. And what would be the right reason?

I feel the right reasons here would be if you're interested in enhancing your prana, prana is your life energy. If you are interested in enhancing the quality of your life, if you're interested in understanding and managing your sexual energy better, if you are tired of always be led through lust and you are interested in leading through love, then conscious celibacy would be a very interesting idea to explore.

And this could be one of those things that you start to practice in a micro way, go small, go easy, and then start to expand the area. Then you start to expand more and more of this practice. Documenting it would be helpful because then you would know if it really worked out for you or what were the challenges.

And you can share that with a friend, a partner, your teacher, and they can guide you much better. So yeah, I think that would be my take on it. Now I want to wrap up the episode with a few solutions, few final takeaways of the tantric celibacy.

Number one thing that would majorly help you in elevating your sexual energy here is your sankalpa, your intention. We do not have intention with our romantic life. We don't have intention with our sexual life. So I would recommend you indulge deep in reflecting writing and becoming clear about what is your sexual energy all about.

In what direction you are entrusted in moving that energy to, is there a creative outlet of your sexual energy. And then create a sankalpa, an intention out of it. Your intention could be as simple as transmuting your sexual energy in creative outlets every day and every way.

Something simple, easy that your mind can understand. All right. When you meditate every day, start practicing raising your awareness from the muladhara to the ajna chakra. Muladhara is the root, third eye is your ajna, right.

So muladhara is the root energy. That's where a lot of these feelings, emotions, energies are built. When you indulge in it unconsciously, it will always fall downward, but when you start practicing it consciously, it will start to go upward. Energy when falls downward becomes sexual.

When you raise it upward becomes spiritual. So every time you meditate, visualize, or even just sense it, feel it, that with the movement of your breathing, the energy from the bottom is going upward and it's expanding on your third eye.

There is a tantra practice for the crown chakra as well, but I'm not even going to share it here because I don't recommend crown chakra practices without a qualified teacher. So for a public platform like this, I'm going to recommend raising, cultivating, building the energy on the route and then raising it upward.

Do it for 30 days during the celibacy phase you're going through. So I'm assuming when you start practicing, you're going to give yourself 30 day of practice to begin with. And in those 30 days, every time you meditate, visualize that energy going upward.

Even when you have the sexual urge, take the energy upward. And as it goes upward, you could repeat your intention. Repeat a mantra, something as simple as Aham Brahmasmi or Soham Namaha. Both the mantras have been repeated multiple times on my podcast on Leela page.

So hopefully it's not difficult for you to remember it. Third thing. Every time your energy goes outward, bring it inside, bring it in. You will notice so much of our stress and anxiety is coming from the outside. You set up a certain expectations, comparisons to set up a certain race in your mind.

Somebody says something to you, and if you don't like it adds up the stress. And stress leads to unconscious sexual outlets. Now this is a very interesting thing I'm telling you. Many of you must have experienced this. When you are stressed out, you tend to indulge in masturbation or an unconscious impulsive sex.

This is because stress leads to that unconsciousness. Lack of sleep leads to that unconsciousness. So to release that stress you will indulge in anything. And unfortunately, sexual release turns out to be the easiest release. It should not be easiest release because it just drains you, exhaust you.

And then you keep repeating the cycle because your mind tells you this is easy, safe, quick, go for it, but it's not fun in the long run. It depletes you of your energy. As you start to practice a conscious celibacy, not only your physical energy changes, but your psychic energy.

That spiritual energy starts to expand. And one of the simplest formula for this is allowing yourself to relax on a daily basis. Don't indulge in coffee, alcohol, cigarette, too much. You've got to have limits, boundaries on it.

Sleep early, wake up early, have a routine. That could feel boring, but consistent and solid. I recommend reading a book called Atomic Habits. I think it's a wonderful book to build habits. Another book I recommend is The Mountain Is You, another nice book to start understanding who you are.

Both of these are not spiritual books, but they do lead you in spiritual pathways if you are willing to play with it in a creative way. And that's all for today, thank you for listening. I hope it was worth your time. And if you like this episode, do share it with others.

If you like that episode, write a review on Spotify and iTunes. Your support, your positive feedback encourages me and the team and it keeps the podcast going. Thank you again, speak to you in another two weeks. Be well. Bye-bye. May the teachings of tantra continue to guide you and heal you.

And I hope Leela Gurukul helps you to unlearn the world 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 life.

Useful Links

Chandresh's YouTube Channel

Find Your Source of Happiness - 21 Day Challenge

Private Guidance Program with Chandresh

Buy the book - Break the Norms

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