losing yourself in love

 

 

 

 

Meditation provides a deeper appreciation 

of the inter-relatedness of all things

 and the part each person plays.

 The simple rules of this game are honesty

 with yourself about where you are in your life

 and learning to listen to hear how it is. 

 

Meditation is a way of listening more deeply,

 so you hear from a deeper space, exactly how it is.

 

 Meditation will help you quiet your mind, 

enhance your ability to be insightful and understanding

 and give you a sense of inner peace.

If you meditate regularly, even when you don’t feel like it, 

you will make great gains, for it will allow you to see

 how your thoughts impose limits on you.

 Your resistances to meditation are your mental prisons in miniature.

When I asked Maharajji how to meditate, he said, 

“Meditate like Christ.” 

I said, “Maharajji, how did Christ meditate?”

 He became very quiet and closed his eyes.

 After a few minutes,

 he had a blissful expression on his face 

and a tear trickled down his cheek. 

He opened his eyes and said, 

“He lost himself in Love.” 

Try the meditation of losing yourself in love…. 

 

 

 

 

~ Ram Dass

 

learning to love yourself

 

~ Ram Dass

behind our billboard - nobody being somebody

 

~ Ram Dass

antidote

You and I are not only here in terms of the work we’re doing on ourselves.

 We are here in terms of the role we’re playing within the systems of which we are a part,

 if you look at the way change affects people that are unconscious.

Change generates fear, fear generates contractions,

 contraction generates prejudice, bigotry, and ultimately violence.

 You can watch the whole thing happen, and you can see it happen

 in society after society after society.

The antidote for that is a consciousness that does not respond to change with fear.

 

~ Ram Dass

can we judge ourselves less harshly

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part of it is observing oneself more impersonally… 

 

When you go out into the woods and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. 

And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens,

 and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. 

You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, 

and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it.

 You just allow it. 

You appreciate the tree.

The minute you get near humans, you lose all that.

 And you are constantly saying, “You’re too this, or I’m too this.”

 That judging mind comes in. 

And so I practice turning people into trees.

 Which means appreciating them just the way they are.

When a tree is very small we protect it by surrounding it with a fence so that animals do not step on it.

 Later when the tree is bigger it no longer needs the fence.

 Then it can give shelter to many.

 

 

 

 

~ Ram Dass

 with thanks to The Marginalian

 

 

 

 

 

deepest root of compassion

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bearing the unbearable is the deepest root of compassion in the world. 

When you bear what you think you cannot bear,

 who you think you are dies. 

 

You become compassion. 

You don't have compassion - you are compassion. 

 

True compassion goes beyond empathy 

to being with the experience of another.

 

 You become an instrument of compassion.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Ram Dass

 art by Susan Cohen Thompson

 

 

 

the garden

 

 

 

 

In relationships, you create an environment with your work on yourself, 

which you offer to another human being to use in the way they need to grow. 

You keep working. You become the soil—moist and soft and receptive—

so the person can grow the way they need to grow,

 because how do you know how they should grow?

After a while, you come to appreciate that what you can offer

 another human being is to work on yourself, to be a statement 

of what it is you have found in the way you live your life. 

 

One of the things you will find is the ability to appreciate what is, 

as it is, in equanimity, compassion, and love that isn’t conditional. 

You don’t love a person more because they are happier

 in the way you think they should be.

What you cultivate in yourself is the garden where they can grow,

 and you offer your consciousness and the spaciousness to hear it.

 

 

 

~ Ram Dass

 

 

 

on judging yourself less harshly

 

 

 

I think that part of [less self judgment] is observing oneself more impersonally.

 I often use this image:

When you go into the woods and you look at trees, you see all these different trees…

 and some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, 

and some of them are evergreens and some of them are – whatever. 

And you look at the tree, and you just – allow it. You appreciate it. 

You see why it is the way it is, you sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light,

 and so it turned that way, and you don’t get all emotional about it, 

you just allow it.

 You appreciate the tree.

The minute you get near humans, you lose all that,

 and you’re constantly saying, “You’re too this,”

 or “I’m too this,” or – that judging mind comes in. 

And so I practice turning people into trees, 

which means appreciating them just the way they are.

There was a period of time where I used to have a picture of myself

 on my puja table, and people would come in and say,

 “My God, what an ego this guy’s got; he’s got his own picture on his puja table

.” But really, what it was, was a chance for me to practice opening my heart to myself, 

and to appreciate the predicament I’m in.

 

 And it’s finding a place in yourself from which you see the unfolding of it all. 

That Mother did this, and Dad did this, drugs did this, Maharajji did this –

 all of it is just an unfolding of a storyline, a drama. The Ram Dass story.

 There he is. How will it come out? How did it come out? 

You’re just sort of watching the stories unfold.

But at the same time, it’s nothing to do with me, because I’m not that. 

That’s just a set of phenomena happening. And when you look at yourself 

as a set of phenomena, what is there to judge? Is that flower less than that?

 It’s just being different than that. You begin to appreciate your uniqueness

 without it being better or worse, because it’s just different.

 Cultivating an appreciation of uniqueness 

rather than preference is a very good one.

It’s just when you get inside identification with your personality

 that you get into the judging mode, because then you are a part of that lawful unfolding.

 You’re not stepping outside of it all. The witness,

 or the spacious awareness, is outside of it.

 It’s another contextual framework. 

 

 

 

~  Ram Dass

 

 

 

 

our curriculum

If you’re involved with relationship with parents or children, 

instead of saying, "I can’t do spiritual practices because

 I have children," you say,

 "My children are my spiritual practice." 

If you’re traveling a lot, your traveling becomes your yoga.

You start to use your life as your curriculum for coming to God. 

You use the things that are on your plate, that are presented to you.

 So that relationships, economics, psychodynamics—

all of these become grist for the mill of awakening.

 They all are part of your curriculum.

 

 

 

~ Ram Dass

 

 

 

division and separateness

Steve Biko


Tall order: We’re asked to enter into this volatile environment

 of division and separateness, but with as much consciousness

 of unity as possible. 

 

So King sets out for Selma. Gandhi begins the Salt March,

 or any number of us join movements for peace and justice.

 Seeking to recruit others, experiencing divisions among ourselves,

 confronting opposing power, wrestling with fear and anger,

 trying to keep a clear sense of our goals…

there are plenty of places to get lost in the struggle.

We need all the clarity and inspiration we can get in order not to violate, 

in our own behavior, the very principles and ideals we’re fighting for.

 

 

 

~ Ram Dass

 

 

 

 

anxiety starts to disintegrate

Being conscious is cutting through your own melodrama

 and being right here. Exist in no mind, be empty, here now, 

and trust that as a situation arises, out of you will come 

what is necessary to deal with that situation 

including the use of your intellect when appropriate. 

 

Your intellect need not be constantly held on to keep reassuring

 you that you know where you’re at, out of fear of loss of control.

Ultimately,  that anxiety starts to disintegrate.

 And you start to define yourself as in flow with the universe; 

and whatever comes along—death, life joy, sadness

—is grist for the mill of awakening.

 

 

 

 

Ram Dass 

suffering brings me so close to God

~ Jack Kornfield

Ram Dass

Trudy Goodman

Krishna Das and others 

door posts

~ Ram Dass

identity with the suffering

The left hand is caught and the right hand pulls it out. 

The left hand turns to the right and says ‘thank you.’ 

It doesn’t work because they are both parts of the same body.

 Who are you thanking?

 You’re thanking yourself.

 So on that plane you realize it’s not her suffering,

 his suffering, or their suffering.

You go up one level, it’s our suffering. 

You go up another level, it’s my suffering. 

Then as it gets de-personalized, it’s the suffering. 

Out of the identity with the suffering comes compassion.

 It arises in relation to the suffering. 

It’s part and parcel of the whole package. 

There is nothing personal in this at all.

In that sense, you have become compassion

 instead of doing compassionate acts. 

Instead of being compassionate, 

you are compassion.

~ Ram Dass

weight shifts

If we can imagine a wheel whose rim is the cycle of births and deaths,
 all of the 'stuff' of life, conditioned reality, and whose center is perfect flow,
 formless no-mind, the source, we’ve got one foot with most of our weight
 on the circumference of the wheel, and one foot tentatively on the center. 

That’s the beginning of awakening. And we come in, and we sit down and meditate,
 and suddenly there’s a moment when we feel the perfection of our being 
and our connection. Then our weight goes back on the outside of the wheel.
 Over and over and over, this happens.

Slowly, slowly the weight shifts. Then the weight shifts just enough
 so that there is a slight predominance on the center of the wheel,
 and we find that we naturally just want to sit down and be quiet, 
that we don’t have to say, 'I’ve got to meditate now,' 
or 'I’ve got to read a holy book,' or 'I’ve got to turn off the television set,'
 or 'I’ve got to do… anything.' It doesn’t become that kind of a discipline anymore.
 The balance has shifted.

And we keep allowing our lives to become more and more simple,
 more and more harmonious. And less and less are we grabbing
 at this and pushing that away...

~ Ram Dass 

what isn't

~ Ram Dass

heart mind

~ Ram Dass

joy

~ Ram Dass

no ground to stand on

~ Ram Dass