The Bizarre Life of a Seeker
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As we are ending the year 2022, Chandresh shares his insight into a seeker's unconventional, rebellious, and bizarre journey. This episode is dedicated to the teachers and mystics who have inspired the journey of seekers for centuries, even in modern times. We hope this episode speaks to the seeker in you and gives you some comfort, courage, and clarity in continuing this path of truth and rawness.
Visit cbmeditates.com to send your questions and learn more about Chandresh's work.
Episode Transcript
The word seeker is such a buzzword nowadays. Everyone you meet is a seeker. I thought I was one too until I realized what a true seeker really is. That shattered many of my belief systems, understanding perspective of a seeker. I realized a seeker never seeks the known or the familiar. A seeker dives into the unknown, unfamiliar. A seeker has no idea where they're going because they're absolutely fully focused and that present moment awareness. So there's no need to worry about where they're going. Once I realized that a seeker is designed to thrive in the unknown, it ended the old role of seeker in me, the old diet and the new seeker started to take birth. Today, as I record this, the seeker that took birth many years ago, I'm still understanding it, still nurturing it. In this episode, as we end the year 2022, I'm going to share the bizarre life of a seeker. I hope it gives you some comfort, some hope, some guidance.
I am Chandresh Bhardwaj and this is Leela Gurukul. Namaste everyone, I hope you're doing well. I hope your heart is feeling calm, relaxed, grounded, safe. The year of 2022 is about to end as I record this. Every year, I think of taking entire month off, not doing anything, no podcast, no consultations, nothing at all, and just disappear into some space. But the universe has interesting humor because December becomes the month when everything becomes too much, too big to handle. I have to just center my energy to make sure I can show up for it. As I'm going through the last few days of this year, I'm self-reflecting, I'm trying to reflect on what did I learn this year, what cultivated my strength, what drained me, what do I need to accept, what do I need to let go? Many of these questions led to this episode today, bizarre life of a seeker because a seeker is meant for a bizarre life. I'm calling it bizarre because that's how the world, the society understands it.
It's not conventional, it's not normal, it's not structured the way society is structured. If I can gather just the bunch of Instagram dm's, emails, even the questions of my students, Leela students, you would notice one of the most fundamental element of a seeker is that they live in a very bizarre space. Nothing is known and they want to accept the known, and yet the mind keeps interfering and it results in quite an interesting spicy drama at times. This episode is not going to answer any specific questions about seekers. It's just going to be a heartwarming note from me to you, from the seeker I was, the seeker I am to the seeker you are. My only hope is you find some comfort, some courage, clarity, and calmness in your space, in your journey as a seeker. Before I begin talking for a nonstop 20 minutes or so, I do want to share that next year for me, for Leela Gurukul is going to be adventurous, bold, brave. So I do need your support.
It's going to be bold and brave because we are stepping into some really powerful spaces in the Leela Gurukul. For the first time, we are having a two-hour workshop on Leela Gurukul. The workshop is called, Demystifying Tantra. It's happening on Friday, January 20th, 2023 at 8:00 AM Pacific Time and 11:00 AM Eastern time. The pricing is $35. So my hope is many of you can join it. There's going to be discussion on Tantra, goddesses, live question answers, live meditation, and you get to keep the entire talk after it's over. There will also be a bonus advanced goddess meditation that will be sent to everyone after the workshop. The link is going to be in the show notes. After the workshop, we are going to launch the Goddess Rising Program, probably the most heartwarming, vulnerable, powerful program that not only Leela Gurukul is hosting, but definitely something so powerful and deep that I'm sharing with students with my tribe. So it already feels very powerful, very overwhelming, but in all the greatest ways.
Then there will be future workshops, retreats that we are going to be announcing next year. We need your love, your support, and one way you can support this sponsor free podcast is by sharing on your Instagram, sharing it with the seekers that you feel will benefit from this. And writing quick reviews on Apple Podcast or Spotify, wherever you can, because that's one definite support that keeps me going, that keeps our team going. Now coming to the bizarre life of a seeker, there are many teachers who influenced my journey as a seeker. Almost every one of you know about my guru, my teacher, Chamunda Swami. He's my dad. But I also address him as Guruji whenever we sit in the rituals, when I'm receiving from him as the student. I don't know where the student sometimes concludes, and the son begins, or where the son concludes and the student begins. It's always a fine line between the two. But he's one profound teacher who has deeply influenced me as a seeker.
I've learned from him not to fit into a certain costume, to show up as the teacher, not to ride in the ego trip and really honor the source who's guiding me to share with you because I've never seen him bragging about the greatest work that he has done and he's doing. I've never seen him taking even 1% of the credit. So when I come from this kind of lineage where you give credit to the goddess consciousness to the souls, and then I see the insta healers claiming, this is my method, this is my invention, this meditation is my invention, this mantra is my formula.
It's a dark, humorous situation at times because the ego wants to possess everything. I always say this, if the original gurus, teachers, if they wanted to copyright this and hold it with themselves the way today's so-called teachers are doing, we wouldn't have been receiving this information the way we do so freely. So first, mention goes to my guru, then there are so many other teachers that he has sent me to many teachers that you may know or heard. I'm going to name some of them the greatest, Ramakrishna Paramahansa, the one who taught me how to show up in love for Makali. Ramana Maharshi, the one who taught me how to dive into who am I. Osho Rajneesh, he taught me how to just be, you could be messy, you could be a divine mess, and you could be as sweet as honey at times. Just be yourself. Of course, Jaykrush Namooti, the no nonsense teacher, inviting all the teachers today as the year ends and inviting back the greatest and the sweetest Ramana Maharshi, because I want to share a story about him.
So Ramana Maharshi, one of the profound teachers from India. He was a teacher, unlike any teacher you have heard or seen because he didn't deliver the motivational lectures, didn't teach the most revolutionary stuff. His way of giving was in silence, his way of teaching you healing you was in solitude. He wouldn't share too many words because his presence was enough, absolutely enough. He didn't need to come up with fancy words. When he was unwell and he knew this is it, his time is coming, and his students got to know, and many people started gathering around him and they started asking him, give us your most powerful teaching. Give us one mantra that we can cultivate before you leave us. He said, "The only mantra is, who am I? Once you know who you are beyond all these labels, everything else will be effortlessly easy to solve." This is the reason I tap into who am I because not only it helps me and the students to go beyond the labels, the stories, the drama of mind, but for me, it also connects me to Ramana Maharshi and his energy.
But the story I want to share about him is that of his cow very popular cow because she always showed up in pretty much every instance story that you hear of Ramana Maharshi. What I've heard is that every time Sri Maharishi would sit down and meditate or sit with the students, which was not too many words, just being in silence with the students, this cow would starts ... Would show up in the beginning of that solitude time. When Ramana Maharshi get up, she would also get up and leave. That went on for years and years. Then suddenly she didn't show up. Sri Ramana Maharshi, he felt Something is wrong. I need to find out. I hope she's well. So she belonged to this nearby farmer. He went there, and the farmer said, she hasn't been well, but she's struggling to walk. She's struggling to go somewhere. She keeps looking in the direction of that mountain where Ramana Maharshi lived.
So Maharshi understood what's going on and he held her face in his lap and the cow was crying, and she died in the next few moments. Ramana Maharshi said, she's not coming back, not coming back as a human, not coming back as a cow. She has joined the greatest, both our consciousness that one has ever experienced, and we need to create some memorial, some tribute, some signs so that her energy continues to inspire the seekers of the future. The reason I'm sharing this story, because this is the kind of bizarre life a seeker lives, this is the kind of love they experience. This Is the kind of stories they find themselves in. Imagine a man so deeply in this pure love with a cow. Imagine a cow showing up for your daily meditations. The beauty of a seeker is they're willing to accept the unknown. They're willing to accept what's not happening, yet they're willing to let go of their ambition and plan because they trust the grand scheme of universe.
A seeker's journey is not a believer's journey. A seeker's path is extremely different than a believer's path because a believer will believe, they'll believe from religion, teachers and so on. But a seeker is not going to simply believe what they read. A seeker is going to seek, experiment, play in that playground, and then move to the next direction. I've seen seekers often struggling to go home because they always feel they don't belong here. In a way they don't belong here. In a way they do belong here. They don't belong here because this world is too sophisticated, too civilized, too stuck in norms, and they're not meant to be gauged in structure in norms. So clearly, I understand the struggle, and they do belong here because this is one of their karmic assignments, the assignment to share, to heal, to show up in their vulnerability.
They're judged. They're misunderstood almost all their life because their way of loving, their way of showing up in life, it's unconventional. It does not fit into the society. Because I shared examples of great teachers, I don't want you to think that a seeker is that perfect Ramana Maharshi Buddha kind of perfect, perfect human, because even these teachers will not fit into your definition of that perfectionism. Because when these teachers were alive, they challenged the establishment, they challenged the religion, they challenged everything that was caging the human consciousness. So nobody thought of them as the greatest teacher alive. The point here is you could be a seeker, you could be sitting next to a seeker, and you have no idea they're a seeker. Because a seeker will challenge the establishment.
A seeker may show up for love for life in the most unconventional way that hits your egosystems like nothing else. The three seekers that often show up in my mind, and they're kind of my safe space, Buddha, Jesus, Krishna, all three of them for me, have been the perfect examples of seekers because in Buddha, the challenged the entire establishment of this kingdom that he was in. Even on his spiritual path, he kept on dismantling the way people were showing up for divinity. The way of Jesus was obviously so deeply profound, forgiving, compassionate. The way of Krishna, probably the most unconventional way, the way he loved woman, the way he loved humanity. My first book, my first Mission, Break the Norms, and even the previous name of this podcast, Break The Norms, was actually inspired from Krishna because I always felt he's the greatest norm breaker that one knows. Now, the problem is Krishna was gone and Hinduism was left, Buddha was gone, Buddhism was left. Whenever any ism is left, it's butchered by the human mind.
We do not see the Krishna consciousness anymore. We don't see the Christ consciousness anymore. We don't experience that Buddha consciousness anymore because the human mind will manipulate and butcher control possess that rebelliousness of a seeker and a seeker is always a rebellion because they'll never fit into the norms of society. For them, conventionality does not work. They do not fit into any template. They could be overly sexual, they could be asexual, but they probably don't care about it. But they're not going to fit into one linear dimension. I cannot give you seven elements of them. Then you can figure a seeker in you because the moment you define them in seven elements or 700 elements, you are limiting them. You are killing them. The point is, from today, onward, show up for that unapologetic rebelliousness in you. Show up for that rawness, courage, and invite in Rumi's words that destroy your repetition, the so-called repetition that has been holding you back. Truly ask yourself, what would I do if this so-called rewards honors validations?
They were irrelevant because they are irrelevant. But the more you chase them, the more you limit your magic, the more you show up in the circus, the more it limits your dance. As I conclude this episode, I hope you end here 2022 with that curious longing of a seeker. If you're listening to this in 2023 or later, I hope the seeker in you continues to bloom, challenge the system and rise up to live with unapologetic courage, clarity, and truth. That's all for today. Be safe, be well. I'll see you in the Leela workshops. May the teachings of Tantra continue to guide you and heal you. I hope Leela Gorukul 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.
Useful Links
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