Reimagine Your Ambition - A Spiritual Perspective
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We have been trained and conditioned to understand ambition as working too hard, becoming successful, and fitting into society’s norm of how they define ambition and success. However, over time especially with the pandemic, many people started to realize what they called ambition was not at all ambition but simply a way to fit in and escape their deeper calling because deeper callings require a lot of changes.
In this episode, we are inviting the visitors to reimagine and revisit what ambition looks like to them. There is a tantra perspective, a meditative suggestion, and plenty of other tools that we hope will help people realize the importance of reimagining ambition so the stress, anxiety, and fear do not multiply and limit your peak potential.
Have any questions or curiosities about your spiritual journey? Email Chandresh at askcb@leelagurukul.com.
Episode Transcript
Be it material ambition or a spiritual ambition, anything that's planted unconsciously is not going to bloom. Ambition really is a product of the mind that doesn't know how much is enough. It may start with a motivation, but it escalates quickly to aggression and wanting to be superior to others. Let's take the next few moments to revisit and reimagine our ambition. I am Chandresh Bhardwaj, and this is Leela Gurukul.
Namaste, everyone. I hope you are feeling relaxed, safe, grounded, wherever you are. Before we get into today's topic, a quick reminder and invitation to visit leelagurukul.com and sign up for the waitlist for Conscious Meditation Program. This is the meditation program that we have been working on for a long time. The current batch is already studying it, and they are loving it. Inspired from their feedback, we are going to be starting the next cohort in September, and you are all invited to sign up for the waitlist because only the people in waitlist will be the first one to be notified and get early access to applications. And as soon as the application limit is closed, we will be wrapping up the next cohort. Explore it on Leela Gurukul, and if it resonates with you, sign up for the waitlist. And I'm excited to connect with you on Leela Gurukul through the conscious meditation. And now let's come back to the episode for today.
Today's episode is about reimagining our ambition, and as I got ready to talk about this, I kept on thinking, if this was shared with me when I was a teenager, I don't know if I would have been open to it, or maybe even in my early twenties. I'm not so sure if I would have been open to this idea, this perspective at that time, but I still wish I had heard something like this at the time. I wish somebody would have reminded me again and again to reimagine my ambition, but whatever age you are at right now, if you're listening this, that's a great step. It's a great step to revisit your courage, great step to redefine what success means for you. And by the end of this episode, my real hope is that you feel more inspired and feel more courage to take the right steps toward your ambition.
There's a story that inspired this episode. It's a story that I've seen multiple times in the Wall Street. I also read similar story in some recent books, especially the psychology of money, a wonderful book if you are ever interested in going deeper about what money really is through a perspective of human psychology. So reading this story reminded me of all the stories I consistently come across from Wall Street Journal or even from the friends and clients who work in Wall Street. So this is a story about a
very well-known investor trader in Wall Street who is a billionaire, and this guy continues to make a lot of money because of his knowledge, because of his connections, networking, and all that stuff.
One day, he got to know that there is some important step happening in one of the companies he's associated with. As soon as he got to know about that powerful change, he calls his friends and asked them to buy the stocks. He couldn't buy those directly because he was directly associated with the company, so he calls his friends. He tells them, buy the stocks, and then later on, he tells them, now you can sell them, once the prices escalated to the level that he knew.
Because it happened in a very interesting manner, the authorities got a little suspicious, so they investigated. And they realized that exactly within few minutes after that board meeting, he calls his friends, and all of the friends who got the call, they all bought the stocks. And the deal was, he'll get a little commission from all of those friends. So a guy who's already a billionaire, he takes the step because he needed ... or he wanted, not needed. He wanted a few extra millions in commission from these friends. Of course, he was caught, and then he was banned for rest of his life to do any trading or to open any company in finance in Wall Street. And of course, he was sent to jail, and he lost all the reputation that he built.
Now let's take another example of people who have high reputation. It could be the political leaders, could be spiritual gurus, could be people with very high influence. Sometimes, they lose all of it because they wanted a little sexual pleasure, and they couldn't handle it consciously. And they indulge in it, and they mess things up. And for the rest of their life, all of the good stuff they have done, it's drained away. It's gone, and people remember them for that sex scandal that they were part of.
Now let's take another example. These are examples of people that you may know. I'm thinking of many of my friends, many of the people I know, who work 14 to 18 hours a day because they want to reach to a certain level of success in their company, and they keep working. And they might be in their 20s. They might be in their 30s, but you don't see any joy, any youthful energy on their face. They started to look exhausted, tired, and even angry at times.
The point of all these stories I've been sharing, there's one common thing that I witness in all of these examples, and the common thing is none of them have ever reflected on how much is enough for them. They've never sat down and asked themselves this question, "How much is enough for me?" And when you don't ask this question, "How much is enough for me?" you will continue to indulge in whatever narrative of success and ambition you are running after.
When I reflected on these stories, when I started to sort of redefine my ambition a few years ago, I recall this very helpful advice and lesson that I got once. I was told that ambition comes from a deep inferior complex. It comes from a feeling of poverty. That poverty could be emotional, financial, or anything else. And that inferior complex could be your own or coming from other factors and family, friendships you have, or any other source.
When I was told this, I was, of course, not fully open to it, and I told myself, I don't have any inferior complex. My ambition is my fuel of life. If I don't have ambition, I don't see why I would wake up and do the things I do, and I always felt very proud of my ambition.
But today, I can publicly confess and admit that of course, my ambition came from a deep inferior complex. I mean, I'm going back to this memory where I used to read multiple newspapers. I would get all the possible knowledge and information out there, and I was a teenager. I was in probably sixth or seventh grade at that time. And if some of you recall the old podcast episodes where I shared that I went to the school in my small town in India where there were plenty of ultra rich people, and on day one of my school, they asked me how much your father makes, what kind of car you have. And we were in fifth grade or sixth grade, I think, day one of my sixth grade, actually.
And when I did very well in exams, I realized all these kids in the class, their perspective and their behavior shifted toward me. Even the teachers started giving me more respect and attention, and I realized I, of course, am a teenager. I cannot make all this money, and I cannot have the cars that these people have. But I can learn. I can get myself educated even beyond what the school books offer, because I was never interested or even honestly respectful toward the school, the formal education system.
But I realized by just getting good grades, these people are sort of giving me a respect, and my inferior complex started finding some healing. It started finding some space, and that really kick-started interesting ambition. It looked beautiful. It looked amazing. I would get all the praise, love, acceptance from teachers, from students, but deep down, it was nothing but a race to handle that inferior complex, handle that feeling of poverty, because ambition will tell you this narrative that I want to be superior. I want to prove that I'm better to you and better than you.
And by doing that, guess what happens. You start to lose your creative courage. You start to lose your real intelligence because you have to downgrade your curiosity and match to the level of everyone around you because only then you can win that game that you are trying to be part of. And I felt that in the school. In fact, after school was over, I started indulging very deep in my spiritual work, and I started writing articles and publishing.
And pretty much every school friend told me this, that we never knew that you have this side of you. We never knew that you are such a deep and trusted seeker in tantra, spirituality, and meditation. And that did not happen because I would not even ever share that side of me with the school kids because you needed acceptance. You wanted to fit in, and your ambition was clearly telling you that you will only fit in if you speak their language. So you start to speak a different language only because that brings you in. That makes you part of them. And ambition never ever is in the present moment. Ambition needs a space to dance. It needs a space to just roam around, and it finds that space in your future. The future, of course, does not exist in this moment. It's just in the imagination. It's a projection. So ambition will keep giving you this narrative that I'll secure your future. You'll have much more joy, much more pleasure, much more of fun in the future if you keep fueling me, and that begins an interesting anti-life process because anything that's dragged to future will take you away from present. And it instantly becomes an anti-life process, and this is the poison of ambition that we all are part of. The problem is each time you succeed in that ambition, you repeat that action, and it becomes a vicious cycle. And it's difficult to get out of it. Some people who understand the drama, the pointless race of ambition, they start to shift the gears, and they move from that material ambition to a spiritual ambition. And they say that now I'm going to meditate. Now I'm going to join some spiritual guru. Now I'll be on spiritual retreats. I'll join some spiritual circle gathering in my community. And if you are not conscious about it, guess what. It becomes even more toxic, even more pointless cycle of ambition because while you were in the material ambition, you knew this is just for the ego. You just want to look good, feel good, and it's all about the pleasure. It's all about the joy. It's all about looking and feeling superior to my cousins, my friends, and to the society. But when you are in the spiritual ambition, you don't even realize how pointless and what kind of games you are playing with your mind because it's spiritual. And everyone around you is repeating constantly that you are on the way to enlightenment, and you are on your way to become the next Buddha. And that becomes a very painful, tragic ambitious cycle because you are joining a bubble and that doesn't even feel like a bubble. And they both are equally damaging. I could even say the spiritual ambition becomes even more damaging because you are so unaware of it. This is where you need to pause, and you need to constantly reflect on how much is enough. How do I define my ambition? How do I revisit and reimagine my ambition? And people ask me all the time, how do you keep a check on your spiritual journey? What if that becomes spiritually ambitious for you? And I have experienced that, and I am glad I got that kick, that tough treatment that I needed to get out of it. And it only happened because of my guru. I'm sure I've shared this plenty of times, but briefly, I'll share. My spiritual journey started not because of any truth seeking or any joyful experience I was looking for. My spiritual journey started because I grew up watching how powerful and how amazingly incredible the gurus are, and I wanted to be one of them. In fact, a friend reached out a few days ago, and we were chatting the good old school days experience. And he reminded me. He said, you were in fifth grade, and you used to tell us that I want to open my third eye so that anything I think of can manifest. And then you would mention the gurus and the masters who are able to do it. And these kinds of experiences inspired me to share this episode with you because I still remember that day. I was in fifth grade, and we had this really popular guru in our town. And I wanted to meet that guru only for one reason so that she can open my third eye. And that was a female guru, by the way. We don't hear about female gurus so often. And I remember I could not meet her, and I spoke to my father that night. And I was angry with him because I was like, I could not meet her, so she couldn't do this. And now you need to do this. And he
calmed me down that night. He said, meditate. Relax, and we'll talk when I come. So as I started leaving teenage behind, then he started telling me in very clear words that what you're calling spirituality is nothing but this bubble of your mind. You want to be powerful. You want to be in this interesting space where all your spiritual fantasies come true. If that's the reason, don't you dare to join the spiritual path, and you will not be my student if that's what you're after. So a lot of unlearning had to happen, and it still happens. That's why I request with folded hands to everyone, be receptive to the teachings of the gurus and the teachers who are in your life. That does not include reading teachings of a guru who's dead already, and you're simply reading from the books and applying as per your comfort level. I'm recommending working with a teacher who is alive, who can kick your ego, who can remind you that this is not spirituality. This is just an ambitious cycle you are part of, and you need to get out of it. This could include meditation. This could include speaking to a spiritual teacher, even sharing with your therapist and constantly reflecting on, how do I define money, success, pleasure? How do I define my spiritual path? Is there a rigid goal? Is there a very high goal that I'm setting for my spiritual path, for my material path? Because all of these external comparisons will make you ambitious, but there is no root foundation to it. There's no ultimate end to it because comparisons will never end. And if you can let go of the ambition and simply go deeper within, plant the intentions, and show up for your life on a day-to-day basis, you will realize there is much more powerful, incredible, abundant journey waiting for you beyond your idea of ambition. And that journey will remind you that life doesn't have a purpose. Life as a purpose in itself. It comes with it, and if you do not interfere with your so called ideas of success, ambition, and so on, then life will bloom. And it will surprise you every day. I'll be curious to know how this episode resonates with you, and if it does or if it doesn't, do let me know. Tag me on Instagram. Write a review on the iTunes. All of your support, messages, everything helps the Leela Gurukul Podcast to be sponsor-free and to just share these lessons with all of you. Be well. Stay safe, and I'll speak to you next week. 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.
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