Illusion to Awareness
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In this episode, Chandresh shares one of the most profound teachings of the eastern wisdom traditions. Through the teaching of Maya, we are invited to look at how we become surrounded and dominated by the illusions around us.
Whether it be the illusion of career, ambition, relationships, making money, fear of abundance, the illusion is everywhere. In eastern traditions, teachers have always said that our suffering comes from not understanding our Maya. This episode is a gentle reminder to understand the illusions, how they condition you, the fear and suppression they cause, and how to go beyond it.
Have any questions or curiosities about your spiritual journey? Email Chandresh at askcb@leelagurukul.com.
Episode Transcript
The path from illusion to awareness is filled with willingness to unlearn the textbook spirituality and bow down to every known and unknown element in the cosmic. In unconditional surrendering lives the ultimate freedom. Breathe. Stay easy, and take time to come back to your childlike energy. Come back to being wild, untamed, and silly. When you live with conscious disobedience, when you grow out the seriousness, you finally taste the ecstasy within you. I am Chandresh Bhardwaj, and this is Leela Gurukul.
Namaste, everyone. I hope you're feeling calm, relaxed, and grounded wherever you are. Today's topic is moving from illusion to awareness, understanding the shift from illusion to awareness. Before we get into illusion and awareness, there is a little bit of reality I'm experiencing right now. It's connected both with awareness and a little bit illusion, and that's the reality of conscious meditation program that's opened today in applications. When this episode will be released, the applications will be open to everyone.
I highly recommend that even if you're slightly interested in deepening your meditation, going on a deeper self-healing journey, apply for the program. Once you apply, you and I will get on Zoom to have a quick 15-minute call to make sure you and I, we are the right fit for the Leela's Conscious Meditation program. And if things go well, you'll become part of the students, the tribe, who's accessing the meditations, the lectures, the group discussions. And also one important update, many of you have always reached out for the one-on-one consultations, one-on-one programs.
And from now onward, all the one-on-one will happen through the Leela's Conscious Meditation program. Until now, the one-on-one with me was happening through a six month program. But now that work is moving to Leela, which means once you join Leela's program, not only you will have one-on-one with me, but you will also have two minimum group calls per month. There's a lot of discussion, reflection, realization going to take place once you become part of the Leela universe.
If you feel inspired, if you feel ready, do give it a shot, apply, and I would love to have a chat with you on Zoom and see where it goes from there. Coming to the topic of today, illusion to awareness. Let's start this with this wonderful story. There was a man. We're going to call him Mr. Intelligent. Mr. Intelligent goes to meet his doctor friend, who's a psychiatrist. And when he's talking about his journey, the ridiculous cases he come across, the psychiatrist said, "There's one interesting case. Let me show you that."
Mr. Intelligent goes to this one particular room where there are two men sitting in two separate rooms. One man is jumping, screaming, not able to sit at one place. The other one jumping even harder, screaming even louder. Mr. Intelligent finds it weird, interesting, and he asked his psychiatrist friend, "What's going on with these two?" And he said, "The first man you are seeing on your right, he was in love with this woman. Her name was Maya, and he was madly in love with her. He really wanted to marry her. And unfortunately, it didn't happen.
She didn't love him enough. She didn't love him back. He pretty much got rejected by her, and he couldn't take the rejection. And he's here. He just lost his emotional strength. He's just dealing with a lot of panic, anxiety, anger, rejection. We are just taking care of him." And then Mr. Intelligent says, "What's happening with the man in the other room?" And the doctor says, "He's the one who married Maya."
The point of this short story is the one who got married to Maya and the one who could not get married to Maya, they both ended up in that room where they lost their mental balance. Before I go further, of course, the story is not gender specific. You could choose any gender, any label, anything. But the reason why I ended up choosing Maya, a female name for the story, because Maya is the main topic for our talk today. Maya is the main essence of this episode today and hopefully I'll be making more episodes and doing more talks on the concept of Maya.
Maya means magic. Maya means illusion. Illusion here does not mean something that does not exist. It means something that you are not seeing it as it is. My own dark story is a symbolic of many things. I feel Maya is one of the most beautiful, profound teachings of tantra, profound teachings of Eastern wisdom traditions. Maya could be a man, a woman. Maya could be ambition. Maya could be a relationship. Maya could be a piece of property. Maya could be power, greed. Maya could be a car. It could be the phone you want to get.
Maya could be anything. It's multi-dimensional. But the truth remains the same, that you are not seeing it as it is. Our entire life goes into the chase to acquire Maya, to possess Maya, and we continue to repeat the same mistake of not seeing it as what it is. One example is our sexual energy. I think it's one of the biggest Maya ever, biggest illusion ever. We have been constantly being used, being reactive to the sexual energy.
And we spend our entire life not being able to understand that if we actually start to manage this sexual energy, everything could change in that life. But instead, we continue to be sold to products, to teachings where they glorify the sexual energy and the promise that even when you are 105, you'll still have the sexual energy if you take this product. We surrender to it only because we are not able to understand the illusion around the sex. Same goes toward material possession. Same goes toward the concept of soulmate, twin flame.
You could be changing 50 twin flames. But if your basics are not clear, if your root energy is not clear, the 50 twin flame will bring 500 more, and the cycle will never end. We are surrounded with Maya all the time. And because it's Maya, it's illusion, we continue to repeat the same mistake of not being able to see them as what they are. The root of this Maya really starts from when we were little. When you were born, we were pure consciousness, gathering infinite possibilities.
When you're born, if you are allowed to remain free, untamed, silly, and connected with center of your consciousness, you will never need to practice any meditation. You will never need to do any chakra cleansing, because you are already clear. You're already filled with life energy. The society creates a disease, and then it wants a treatment for the disease. The reason we all have to take refuge in meditation, mantra, chakra cleaning, and all this modern spiritual products, because we have created a disease.
The use of meditation will be irrelevant if we were allowed to go beyond the shackles of discipline, the shackles of obedience, because what really is this obedience and discipline, these are the rules, the software, the programming that's done to us. When we are not living as per the script of our culture, our family, we are asked to be disciplined. We are asked to be obedient. You slowly start to move away from the center of consciousness.
And whenever you are not centered in your consciousness, you will want to chase Maya, some illusion, to fulfill that center, to fulfill that pain, to fulfill that loneliness. And today, I hope you take some time to understand the Maya in your life, to understand the illusions in your life, because those illusions are the ones that are taking you away from your freedom, that are taking you away from your free untamed spirit. It could be the illusion that Mr. Intelligent was looking at. The one who had it was suffering.
The one who could not have it was also suffering. And that's the root element of every Maya. You could have it, or you could not have it, but suffering could come from both. Because those who don't have it, they feel they're missing out on something really precious. And those who have it, they get so stuck in that trap that they start to create the suffering within their mind. The house of Maya is on our mind. Mind will always chase the past, the future, the idea of success, the fear of failure. Tantra has a beautiful solution to it.
The solution is very simple, bow down to every known and unknown element you see out there. Go beyond the belief systems. There's a reason why tantra has always called as the signs of self-awareness or the technology, because you could give anything to a tantric. You could give sexual energy. You could give addiction. You could give anger. A tantric will eventually find a way to channel that into something divine. When you come across illusion, tantra will not say run away from it or hate it or suppress it.
Tantra will say, "Use these illusions to understand who you are, why you are chasing it, and then create a path to go beyond it." One way to do that is to bow down to every element that you come across. I will be making a separate episode on just the concept of surrendering, how to bow down, because it has become so clear to me in the past 10 years that one of the most difficult thing for a human mind is to bow down. The ego doesn't want it.
Ego doesn't even want to accept that you may need a teacher at some point, because the concept, the popular code, you are your own guru, is so filled deep into the mind, but it's filled so unconsciously that you are not able to even understand that you are surrounded with ocean of wisdom, spiritual awakening. And simply because your ego is calling the shots, you're not ready to bow down to the mountains, to the trees, to the humans, to the homeless, to everyone around you.
As long as you get stuck in selective spirituality, you will always be led by the illusions in your life. These illusions will do exactly what they're designed to do. They'll make you feel that you are part of awakening, and yet you're not going anywhere. It's that perfect analogy of the merry-go-round. You're sitting on it. It's moving fast. You are feeling the thrill. Now you are feeling dizzy, and it's super fast. But after 10 minutes when you get out of it, you're still there. Just a little more dizzy. Just a little more weak in the body right now.
That's all for today. I hope you take time to meditate on what illusions are calling the shots in your life, what illusions are holding you back, and what illusions you are holding deep within. Take time to reflect and hopefully you'll find freedom, liberation from those illusions. May the teachings of tantra continue to guide you and heal you. 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.
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