Resistance vs. Acceptance
Conscious texting with CB on +1310-361-5485, available to seekers in the USA and Canada only.
This week’s episode invites listeners to reflect on what they are denying to themselves, what they are resisting, and the roots of the resistance. Why is it something we resist continues to show up in one way or another?
Chandresh shares two very profound stories in this episode. One of them is one that inspired Chandresh to find his voice, and the other is one he was a part of. We hope this episode helps people reflect on what they are resisting, the way out of the unconscious pattern of resistance, and how to cultivate more acceptance for who they are and the elements and emotions unfolding within them.
Have any questions or curiosities about your spiritual journey? Email Chandresh at askcb@leelagurukul.com.
Episode Transcript
We are born as pure consciousness. In that moment, there is no corruption, no barriers, no divisions based on religion or any other belief system. We are simply the infinite possibility of life in that moment. And then slowly, gradually, as we start to grow up, we get conditioned through fear, the fear of things that we should always resist and the things we should blindly believe. The plot twist is, the more you resist, the more those things will show up and they end up making us angry, confused, frustrated, and so on.
The question here is, is there a way to find freedom beyond these patterns? What does tantra have to say about this endless cycle of resisting and fighting the desires? Let's take a deep breath and take the next few moments to explore and reflect the gap between resistance and acceptance. I am Chandresh Bhardwaj, and this is Leela Gurukul.
Namaste, everyone. I hope you are feeling relaxed, safe, and grounded wherever you are. Before we get into today's topic, a reminder to visit Leela Gurukul to sign up for the Conscious Meditation program waitlist. In a few weeks, the applications will open. And we are adding more excitement, curiosity, more playfulness in this program.
It's a six-month online program with self-study, including more than 30 guided meditations with mantras, more than 15 talks, access to a private community among all the Leela students and an option to even schedule a one-on-one with me to handle the deeper challenges that you experience through the program. And of course, we have two monthly group calls where we address and discuss plenty of stuff during those two hours. If this resonates with you, visit Leela Gurukul, sign up for the waitlist, and we'll have a chat soon to discuss if you and I and Leela, the three of us are the right fit for each other.
And now, the topic for today. I think I'll be able to explain the message, the essence of this topic, two very interesting stories. One of them I heard growing up, the other one I was actually part of. The first story that I'm going to share, the title of that story is Priest and Prostitute.
Now, priest here represents simply someone who's doing service of his religion. It could also be a yoga slash meditation teacher. It could be anyone who's basically preaching, preaching stuff about religion and God, spirituality, meditation, chakras, anyone. A priest is simply a generic word here that we are using.
And the other label here is prostitute. And prostitute here could represent a variety of sexual angles. It could be a sex worker. It could be someone who is exploring her sexuality, someone who's sexually free, plenty of various ways to look at it.
And the reason I'm explaining a little bit more about labels, because they are labels. My hope is you will absorb the essence of the story beyond the labels. Now, this story inspired me to find my voice after I quit the banking, the Wall Street. Hopefully, it will also give you some gateway into your journey.
So the story goes like this, the priest and prostitute lived in the same building and next to each other in the different apartments, but the apartments were next to each other. When priest got to know there is a prostitute who lives next to him, he was angry. He felt disgusted. Why someone like her is living right next to his house?
So every day, whenever he would see her, he would get angry. He even spoke to the building managers, that she's not a good influence to the society and people. There are kids here, adults, men here, especially, and that's just not good and they should kick her out. And her presence was always creating anger, frustration, and even shame and guilt and heard many times. And we'll know why. We'll talk about that as well.
Anyway, long story short, one day they both died. And when they reached the gates of heaven and hell, she was invited into the gates of heaven and he was asked to enter the gates of hell. And of course, the priest got angry. He demanded that, "Whoever made this decision needs to be here, or I should be given the right to speak directly to God, because this is a crime happening right now."
And when he was yelling, screaming in anger, the God appeared. And the God said, "What happened? Why are you making this scene?" And he said, "All my life, I preached about you. I spread your word. I encouraged people, motivated them to join your path. And this is the reward you're giving me, you're putting me into hell? This is absolute betrayal of all my service to you. And that woman who lived next to my building and next to my house, she's been given space in heaven. Do I even need to explain that this is either a major mistake or everyone has just gone crazy in heaven and hell, and this is not right?"
God smiled, when it heard that. That's the anger of priest. So God started to explain. "Priest, that when you were preaching about me, when you were talking about me, you always had her playing in your background. When you would look at her, you would get angry because she invoked certain feelings in you, and you would fantasize about her. And that would bring more shame and guilt. And you always wanted to kick her out, because her presence was giving energy to all the suppressed feelings in you. And because you always judged sex, and you told everyone that sex is wrong, sexual energy is wrong, and she became this symbol of everything that you considered wrong.
But on the other hand, whenever she looked at you, she would smile. She would want to talk to you, but you would get angry even more. You never spoke to her, but she wanted to speak to you because she always felt blessed to live in a space where a priest lives next to her. And she felt that was an opportunity for her to finally know the truth of this life.
While she was doing her job and getting paid for sex, she always had me in mind. She was always yearning to know what is divinity? How can I experience my higher consciousness? Does God exist? If the God exist, how can I find God? How can I experience godliness? And you were that hope for her, but you never spoke to her. You never considered her to be worthy of your conversation.
So while she was doing a job that was considered wrong, unacceptable and terrible by entire society, that God was playing in the background. And while you were doing a job that was considered amazing, noble and beautiful, you had your feelings of suppressed sex, anger, hate, and plenty of more such feelings in the background. And this is why you are here because you need to learn the lessons of what went wrong. And the reason she is there because her entire intention in this lifetime was to experience God."
And I'll quickly move on to the second experience that actually happened with me. And then we'll talk about the essence of these stories.
Many years ago, I went to this place with my cousin who graduated high school and he had a month or two, I believe, to just do nothing basically. So I said, "I'm going to this place, I'll be meditating. And I need to visit this specific place for one of my retreats, so why don't you join me? We'll have a good time. We'll enjoy the food. We'll explore these places. And of course, we'll meditate and discuss some life lessons." And he agreed. He joined me.
And one particular day, we went to this place and not going to mention what place was that. I mean, it was a religious slash spiritual place, a very well-respected place. What religion or what belief system they followed, that I'm not going to mention for obvious best reasons. Nowadays, it has become very, very challenging to share something with a label and not offend people. And more than offending people, the entire mind starts to go into that particular direction. And I don't want that your judgment goes to this particular religion because of what you're going to hear, because the religion is not wrong. The people who are thinking that they are the caretakers of religion, they need help.
So this is what happened that day, we went there and I shared with them that I want to explore this space for one of my retreats. I want to bring students here, because I've heard such great things about this place. And I know if they meditate here, they will benefit. And there were plenty of people in the room. Half of them didn't even acknowledge our presence. The other half were just staring. And then there were two or three who started talking to us, but they were rude, disrespectful and didn't want to engage. And I understood they were all senior people, senior teachers, you could say, senior in whatever field they were in.
And my cousin, he's a high school student. And this is five years ago. So if you see my recent pictures on Instagram, I have a beard. I have longer hair, but in those days I was clean shaven, shorter hair. And everybody thought I'm also a college student. So maybe they thought they're just some young kids not serious enough. So they told us, "This is not a place for you guys. What we do here is very intense, very powerful. It's not at all for younger kids like you." And I was like, "No, I completely get it, but this is what I do. This is my profession. This is what I've been doing for these many years," and so on.
And they were still repeating the same thing and now with more anger, a little more rude energy. And when it happened two or three times, of course, a part of me wanted to leave, but a part of me wanted to conduct an interesting social experiment. So I shared about my lineage and I shared about some specific teachers who were very strongly connected with that place. And those teachers are very close to me as well. So when I mentioned those teachers and my lineage, the entire vibe in the room changed.
In the next five minutes, we were invited for lunch. We were offered a very nice seating space in a private room. And we were given two guides to go for the tour. And that also shows the sadness of the space we are in. You are always judged through the connections you have from the place you come, the privilege you bring on your shoulders. It's terrible. And I was hoping that should not happen, but that was the part of social experiment. So anyway, that whole thing happened. And when the tour completed, the person who repeated three times about the intensity, sacredness and the high powerful stuff they do, which is not worthy of people who don't belong there, the same person told us something very interesting.
He said, "You know, whenever you want to come with students, you can come. If you want to come without students, you can come. And you know, we'll allow you to do anything here. You are most welcome. You come from such a powerful lineage and the people you are connected with. So you are most welcome. We'll do anything you want us to do. And if you want to have fun with girls here, that's the only thing you cannot do here, but I can arrange them for you, but it will be at a different place."
And I thought I heard it wrong, so I said, "I'm sorry, what? I didn't get you." He said, "No, if you want to hang out with local girls and, you know, have sex and all of that stuff, I can arrange, but that won't happen here. It could happen somewhere else. And I can arrange that as well." And I said, "No, we are fine. We are not here for that."
And then he looked at my cousin, because he thought maybe he would want that. And my cousin had a blank stare at his face that what exactly is going on, because this person was just telling us how amazingly, highly spiritual everyone here is and nobody is worthy of their spiritual sacredness. So we told them, "Of course, this is not why we are here, but thank you for the tour. Thank you for the lunch and everything. And we'll let you know."
I didn't go to that place after that and didn't conduct the retreat there. No judgements at all to the people who went through this whole event, who shared what they shared with me, because there is a reason why they said what they said. The point is, and that's the message of what the story is, whatever you deny in your being, that will become your cage. Whatever you resist, it will show up in a form that's going to be uglier, that's going to be heavier. And if you do not understand what's happening, it will become your entire life. It will become your personality. It will become your karma, your destiny, everything.
In the first story, the prostitute versus priest, the priest was simply doing the job because he was in that role, but he was not fully into it. Wearing a costume will not make you among priests, pundit or whatever. This is why we have plenty of monks, but not the enlightened monks. This is why we have monks who are not able to survive there. Either they run away and they start selling the business courses, spiritual courses after that based on whatever few weeks or months they spent there. And this is why this path needs a revisit.
You should be choosing the monk path after plenty of self-reflection. But if it's happening out of force, out of just a phase you're going through, you're going to bounce, because the monks are pushed to suppress their anger, the elements of sex, elements of desire, and plenty of other fundamental human feelings.
And the truth is, they go through it with anger. They keep suppressing it. And one day, they realize maybe it was never supposed to be resolved. Maybe it was never supposed to be fixed this way. There are very few, it's a small percentage of monks or such teachers who organically work on it, but most of it is happening in a very suppressed way.
And what was working right for the sex worker there was actually her acceptance of what she was doing and her ability to go beyond the job she was doing and still connected to her yearning, and still connected to a longing for the divinity. And that story is a complete tantra story.
I actually started writing a fictional story based on just these two characters. I lived with it for a long time, but ultimately, it became sort of a foundation to explore what I wanted to explore and connect with in the human behavior, the suppression, the complexity, the cultural conditioning that really creates our personality.
And what happened in that place of worship where I went with my cousin was a classic example of how they were all suppressing anger, their views on sex. And it just came out in the most terrible way. They were trained to talk spiritual. They were given the script, so they became these spiritual robots who would simply be on this pedestal where everybody else is not worthy of what they're doing, but they were holding that suppression in a very painful way.
So while I stayed in the surprise element of what unfolded, but overtime, I had compassion. I also always hoped that maybe some of them left that place to realize that this is not where they belong and they need to go through their journey somewhere else, because the labels of being in such a place is so heavy that they don't know how to go beyond it. The place is not bad. The signs of that place is not bad. There is power there, of course, but the people who become caretakers, they get trapped into their own story, into their own belief system and conditioning related to that place.
Many years ago, when I started doing the talks in New York, I used to have this one girl who would show up in the talks, wouldn't talk with anyone and leave quietly in the end. And she would show up consistently. And then she asked me a question one day, and then again another question. Her questions were very powerful, very deep, and everybody held a beautiful space for her.
And then one day, she told me that she's actually a sex worker. And I said, "That's fine. Why are you sharing this today, and is there a reason why you felt the need to share it?" She said, "You know, I have always wanted to go deeper into my spiritual path, but each time I would reveal my identity, I would be told to change what I'm doing and come back when you're not working as a sex worker." And she said, "I never felt seen or accepted in any community, any spiritual space. And I want to leave this, but I am in this complex space. I didn't jump into this work with excitement and I cannot just leave right now. It's not just black and white. There are many shades into it."
And after that day, I have had plenty of men and women in my talks, or even who reach out to me through Instagram, through podcast, who are sex workers and they share plenty of stories. And yes, the funny thing is or the irony is, each time I speak to someone who is exploring their sexuality or who are actually working as sex workers, they only talk about consciousness, divinity, meditation and very powerful stuff. We never ever actually go into any kind of a discussion on sex or even casual conversation on sex.
But when I end up talking to people who are self-proclaimed enlightened healers, they are the ones who end up revealing so much darkness, so much suppressed sexuality, so much of suppression in all elements, but this is where we are. That society is structured in such a interesting way that the moment you put on us, on a particular label, you are expected to dance like that label and you cannot go beyond that label. So the people who have this label of a spiritual teacher, or healers, or whatever wellness branding they are building, they get trapped in their own labels and they get confused whether they should be sharing this part or not talking or how to address that. And it ends up revealing itself in a complex way.
And you don't have to share your personal struggle or journey on Instagram, podcasts, or all these social spaces, but you must address them within you, because what we deny in ourselves becomes the center of our consciousness and our entire life will revolve around it. If you deny sexual desire, that will take up all the space. If you suppress the anger, your whole being will become angry. And you'll keep seeing these patterns. So this is why my respect for tantra is so huge because, in tantra you are invited to play with the elements of sex, anger, greed, ego, and all of those elements will help you to transform.
In fact, there is a temple called Khajuraho in India. And Khajuraho is one of those unique temples where the students were sent to meditate before they join the path of tantra students, or even before they become a certain kind of monks. And in the Khajuraho temple, there are erotic carvings, statues, images of couples, multiple couples lovemaking, having sex, indulging in various expositions. And as you go deeper into the temple, there is nothing in the middle of the temple. It's all just empty space, but it's surrounded by all these erotic images. And the point of this temple is, in order to reach that nothingness, you have to cross these experiences and emotions of sexual energy, desires, because if you suppress it, you cannot reach and experience that emptiness.
When you are invited into a path where you are, you have to simply resist or blindly believe, you will become angry. You will become frustrated because we are not designed to live life that way. There is no button in us that you can just turn off and everything will change. What you resist and deny will always become your prison. Remember that. But when you understand and accept only then you can help your energy to evolve.
So there are people right now who might be listening to this and you know that you might be resisting either the sexual energy in you, or your perspective on money, or your belief systems about how successful you should be, or how you should be handling certain relationships. And the more you deny, the more you resist those natural feelings of how to handle and navigate through these energies, the more complicated you are making them, the more ugly you are making them.
The reason why sexual energy comes out in such a frustrated form, it's because we have been denying it forever. The reason why the anger of a child looks so beautiful, but the same anger on an adult looks horrible because now the anger is no more a beautiful expression, because of constant denying and suppression, the anger has started to look ugly. You never gave it the flow.
It's like a river streaming beautifully, but when you stop it, it becomes stagnant. And then there are mosquitoes now. It becomes a mini trash pod. And that's why the stuck river, the stagnant river looks bad. No one wants to go there. So anything that you're blocking and resisting will start to feel like that stagnant river. It's going to invite disease. It's going to invite even more uneasiness and anxiety.
Before I end, the point of this podcast is very simple. Ask yourself, what is it that you are resisting? What is it you're struggling to accept? Create your own way, create your own method to understand your patterns of resistance. And then reflect, meditate on what is there in your energy and your life to accept. Somewhere between the reflections on resisting and acceptance, you'll find your magic.
If this podcast resonates with you, do share your questions and do share a review on iTunes. And of course, share this on Instagram and tag Leela Gurukul and CB Meditates. That's all for today. Enjoy, have fun and release all that you are resisting.
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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