Ram Dass Now

As I look out my living room window, I can see the winter’s first snow slowly melting off of the trees. When I woke up this morning, the trees were radiantly white. Drop by drop, they are changing back into the colors of fall. The trees look pretty much the same as they did yesterday afternoon, before the snow fell. Yet on the inside of the tree, there are profound changes. They are full of the water that fell from the skies. Water that will help them grow. They may not use all of the water up right away, but it will always be there, ready to be utilized when the time is ripe. The thing is, when the tree is covered in the snow, all it really feels is coldness and darkness. It isn’t able to see the beauty that lies beyond the veil of the snow. I don’t think the tree even cares. It knows that it is just all perfect as it is. Wet, dry, cold, hot, dark, light. Going with the flow of the universe.

At the beginning of last week, I was the snowless tree. Then, I got covered in a thick, heavy snow, emotionally speaking. I felt so dark inside. I was angry, sad, depressed, exhausted. I was so down that it got to the point where I just could not take it anymore. So I fell back. I gave up. What happened then was exactly what page 105 says:

…and then I was ready for the next message

When I became quiet enough to hear it, it was all so clear. Every piece of the puzzle was a reflection of myself. All of a sudden, I saw it.

“I just found my own shadow. All the time, that’s all you ever find: yourself” (p104)

I could see all the places I was stuck. Carin had some beautiful words:

“Relationships- as vehicles for awakening- don’t have anything to do with the other person”

So true! It really had nothing to do with the other person. Once I turned inward and confronted the places deep within me where I was all clogged up, and was able to really work with those areas, I felt the light slowly replace the darkness.

I have been graced with an opportunity to open more fully to my true self. If this situation had never happened, then I would still be stuck deep down. I feel thankful to have the opportunity to liberate the part of me that has to be in control. This is a chance to let go.

Drop by drop, I am getting closer to my original state, returning home.

Yesterday, I broke down, emotionally speaking. During this “breakdown”, it felt as if I was being thrashed around by my emotions in the midst of an enormous tornado. So many thoughts…such fear! My thinking mind was resisting the Now so much that it had nothing to do but snap, cave in. So I snapped. Then, it was

Quiet

“Hold fast enough to quietness” p 94

I feel filled with this deep quiet peace now. Prior to this, I felt that I just could not talk enough about all these things going on in my life to others. Chatterbox. Constantly trying to gain ground with my words, only to find myself running up a steep hill covered in thick mud, sliding back as I desperately try to propel myself forward.

It is hard to put into words a wordless state.

Similarly, I used to try so hard to turn others on to the Now. I wanted to “run down the streets, shouting- spreading the good news” (p 97). Now, I am learning to “watch it” (p 97). They will hear the message when they are ready to hear the message, right?

I share my Be Here Now book with my 2 year old. He likes the imagery. I think a part of him feels the high vibrations of the book. Nonetheless, this sharing has caused the cover to be stripped off, the new cover now being the page with the labyrinth picture. As I sat on the couch, thinking about the reading for the week, this picture just sat there next to me. I began to stare at it. It has been the cover for quite some time now, but I have never really contemplated it. I realized how similar this little finger labyrinth is to life. I slowly traced it with my finger. There were moments when I thought I was getting closer to the center, to the Om, only to be directed away from it the next. Also, if my eyes moved ahead of the point where my fingers were at, it looked like I was on the wrong path. It made it look like I should move my finger to another spot. Only when I focused my attention on the exact point where I was did I know that that was where I belonged. The rest was just an illusion.

It’s all an illusion (p 92)

This brings me full circle. Back to my life situation. My life situation is not my Life. I have created this dramatic life situation. All the fear, stress, sadness…it is all made up! The moment is being tainted by my mind made problems. Right now, everything is perfect. Nowhere to go, nothing to do, only be here now. That is where I find my quiet place. The future and the past are too noisy in my mind. Too thick of a screen. Such distortion. This moment is where the clarity is at.

As I take a deep breath into this moment, I find space in my heart. This space is healing. In this open heart space, the desire to find solace in some imagined future situations falls away. I find myself not necessarily happy with my life situation, but content. This, after all, is the only way it could be. So here I am, chopping wood and carrying water. Learning to watch myself. Content with the is-ness of it all.

Flash back to this morning. I am sitting on the carpet with my 2 boys, playing “choo choo train” with my 2 year old (Clavey) as my 3 month old (Canyon) sits in my lap. Bob Marley comes on the radio. Clavey LOVES Bob Marley. He runs up to Canyon, filled with excitement, and tries to lift him out of my lap by his head. He wants to dance with Canyon. I quickly move Clavey away from Canyon, and in the process pull my neck and back out. It feels as though I have never stained a muscle so much. Excruciating. It continues to hurt throughout the day, but gets better. It is mostly a constant ache, with an occasional stabbing sensation. However, there are moments when the pain completely subsides. When this happens, I feel absolutely blissful. I feel as though I want to run up to my husband and kids, hug and kiss them, and tell them how much I love them. In these pain-free moments, I feel this intense love and contentment with life. These are short moments, but they are a welcome relief.

I imagine that in these gaps of pain, I am getting very close to the “place of pure being”. Maybe I am even touching it. The thing that is so hard is to not hang on to those moments. If I do this, I suffer double-time. When in pain, I am also yearning for that blissful state, which causes me to be even more miserable.

The thing that blows my mind is that the pain-free moments are the norm in my everyday life. My body usually feels pretty good. However, the blissful feeling only arises when preceded by a painful moment. The bliss is always there. The pain is a catalyst that helps bring it to the surface. I am working on being thankful for the painful moments. It is easy to be thankful for them during a blissful moment, but in the midst of the pain, not so easy.

I am doing the same thing with some family drama I have been having go on around me. Trying to be thankful for the opportunities for growth that this drama presents. In the midst of the drama, I have a hard time not getting all worked up. Only when the encounter is over do I see the lessons presented. Thanks to Blake’s post, treating it as dRAMa rather than Drama has helped.

All this family drama has helped me turn inward. I see myself as the eye of the storm. So much family debris flying all around me, but from my seat, complete stillness. I tried to extricate myself physically from it all, but quickly saw that by doing that, I am only adding to the drama. By being right in the thick of it, extricating my consciousness from it, and turning it inward, I feel myself going Om.

A side note I thought I would add. The other day, I was having a particularly rough day. Both boys were fussing a lot, and my energy was way off. I hit a point where I thought I may snap. At that moment, I began chanting “Om Namah Shivaya” for maybe a minute. Clavey had never heard that chant before. Later that night, I was nursing Clavey to sleep. All of a sudden, he stopped nursing, cuddled his little head into the crook of my neck, started chanting “Om Namah Shivaya”, and then just fell asleep. It warmed me up all the way to my soul.



The night of Halloween used to be the most feared evening of the year. It was believed by the Druids in Britain and Brittany, France, that on this night, Samhain, the Lord of Death, allowed the spirits of those who have died within the last 12 months to roam the earth. In order to fend off the evil spirits, the Druids would light huge bonfires on hilltops. This tradition of lighting bonfires has since evolved into carving pumpkins and putting candles inside of them. Nonetheless, may we all honor those souls that have gone before us on this special day.

When I think of the whole notion of “those souls that have gone before us”, it seems like a sort of oxymoron to me. Where can a soul go? “There is nowhere to go and there is nothing to do”.  Maybe the right term to use would be “those bodies that have gone before us”. The souls, or Soul, is always here, in “eternal time and space”.

I love this idea of having nothing to do and nowhere to go. It provides a welcome relief from the feeling of never doing enough. It reminds me of the feeling I would get when I was younger, looking at pictures of our planet, surrounded by other planets and stars, and a whole lotta space. It would make me feel so small. Maybe some people don’t like feeling small, but I always have. Looking at Earth put things in perspective for me when I was younger. All of a sudden, things that were bothering me didn’t seem like such a big deal. I mean, there I was, on this tiny planet in the middle of who knows where, worrying about not having skinny enough legs. I would call it the “zoom out”. Take your position on this planet, and zoom out to the Milky Way (and that is just the beginning). Are you still worried about the fact that those jeans that have been sitting in your closet for 5 years still don’t fit? If you are, zoom out further. It is a never-ending zoom-out. I always picture some other being on another planet worrying about the same thing I am. When I do that, it all just seems kind of silly.

Here we are, on this day, honoring the spirits. While we honor these spirits, may we honor the Spirit as well. That is, the eternal Spirit. The Spirit within us all. Because essentially, in honoring those spirits, we are really honoring ourselves, as we are all of these spirits, and they are us. And in knowing that, we honor the Spirit. So as you do whatever you are doing tonight, may that pumpkin sitting in the corner of the room remind you of the bonfire on the hilltop. May the bonfire remind you of the spirits. And may the spirits remind you of the eternal Spirit. So lets just skip some of those steps.

Tonight, let the pumpkins remind you of the eternal Spirit that we all are.

Boo!

At one time, the brightest minds believed that the planets were attached to crystal spheres, and that every once in a while, angels or gods would give these spheres a little spin. This is what explained the movement of the planets in our solar system. With scientific advancement, we now know that this is not the case.

This is what we seem to do. If we cannot understand something, we say it must be the work of God, or the angels, or demons. Then we figure it out, and God goes on to some other phenomenon not yet figured out.

How far can this go? Does it even matter?

What I believe at the moment:

Everything happens for a reason (in favor of this one)

There is no reason for anything

The point is, I have no idea what is going on. I mean, REALLY? This whole being alive here on planet Earth strikes me as absurd. I look around every day and I am just blown away. Will the fact that I (along with my wonderful hubby) made my children ever cease to amaze me? I just have a hard time believing it. Just a couple days ago, my husband looked at our son (now 2), then at me, and said “can you believe he came out of you?” No, I cannot. My babies grew inside of me for 42 weeks, without any work (besides remembering to eat) on my part.

One of the first midwives (before she became a midwife) remembers lying in the hospital bed ready to give birth, wondering where the heck her baby was going to come out. She figured it would come out of her mouth, as it was the largest opening in her body. She just had faith it would come out somewhere.

Where am I going with this?

We don’t know all the answers. We hardly know anything. I know I was born, and I know I will die. That’s about it. At least that is what I know intellectually. That is what I can state in words.

God, the Guru, that is all soul. That, I cannot explain. The word that seems to suffice is faith. But that word still seems flimsy. Faith is just belief without evidence, which is what this soul stuff appears to be on the surface. But it is more solid than that. It is a deep knowing on an unexplainable level.

I know on this level that we are all One, and that one day, we are all going to return to that place. Maybe science will prove me wrong in the future. And honestly, I don’t even care if it does. I am just enjoying the view from where I am at now.

I have been thinking about death a lot lately. My death. I close my eyes, and picture myself dying. When I “come to”, and see that I really am not dead, what is left is Love. Pure love.

In an instant, any one of us could perish. Well, our bodies could perish. This simple thought fills me with intense love for this very moment.

There was a time in my life when I thought I was dying. I wrote letters to those that were close to me, with a plan to hand them out in my last moments. There were a lot of strange things happening to me during this time, but there are two particularly vivid memories that I want to share. During this time, I often felt sharp pain rising up my spine. It scared me. Every time it happened, I was sure I was about to have a heart attack. I remember calling my brother in tears during one of these episodes, so afraid that my heart was taking its last beat. The other memory I have made the people I told about it look at me like I had gone crazy. There was this bush up the street from my house that looked like my hair, at least to me. I was positive that my hair was made of this bush. I thought that somehow, my hair had been taken over by the bush. The bush and my hair were the same. Needless to say, after conveying this and many other similar experiences (too many to write about right now) to people, I was told it may be best if I seek a therapist. A lot of people thought I was on drugs. No drugs. I also want to make note that even though I was very scared that I was going to die, during this time I was also feeling huge amounts of love for everything around me. More love than I had ever felt.

Instead of a therapist, I went and got CAT scans, MRI’s, EEG’s, EKG’s, you name it. I was sure they would find some terrible disease in me and tell me that I had one month left in this body. Nobody found anything. I was in “perfect health”. But I knew something was not right. I decided to go to an energy medicine specialist. She diagnosed me as having “heart fire”, too much energy buildup in my heart. I did acupuncture, took herbs, and the symptoms went away. This happened about 4 years ago. I have not thought about it deeply until recently. I now see it as much more. My kundalini was being awakened, which I took as a sign of a heart attack. I thought my body was going to die, but it was my ego that was getting close to death. I thought my hair was a bush, but I was really merging into the One.

The thing is, I was not ready for the experience at the time. I wasn’t quite ripe for it. Here was this transformational experience happening to me, but I was unable to receive its teaching. It’s the same with the Guru. The Guru could be my dog for all I know. Right in front of me, everyday. I am not going to know until I am ready.

Treating everyone as if they could be your Guru. A beautiful way to go about life. I had a conversation with a man at the Farmer’s Market yesterday, while in the back of my mind thinking “he could be my Guru”. It made the conversation so much fun! And I am pretty sure all we talked about was the fact that he had a son in medical school, and how fast kids grow up.

The bottom line is, you just never know. You never know when you are going to die, you never know when you are ready to receive a particular teaching, and you never know when you are going to meet your Guru. That is, until you Know. When you Know, then you will know.

Last week I talked about everything being my sadhana. Everything. The next day I found out my Nana has cancer. A few days later, I got the stomach flew. So did my 2 boys.  I felt like fluid was coming out of every possible opening…throwing up…leaking breast milk everywhere…diarrhea…sweat. Let’s just say I did not look my best. I could not use my brain very well (which was probably a good thing), but I did have one thought:

Very funny Maharaj-ji.

He was putting me on. He heard my post, and came back with a “try and make THIS your sadhana!” After I allowed Maharaj-ji into this whole experience, I was able to let go a little bit. As I was bent over the toilet, wallowing in my own self-pity (ooohhhhhhhhhh, this is so haaaaaaaaaaarrrrrdddddd), I would just picture Maharaj-ji smiling at me. At one point, I was even able to become the witness, seeing this intense drama unfold before me. I decided that this was some sort of sick fire-work show that Maharaj-ji was putting on for me. With my 2 children and I throwing up, it was as though it was the finale the whole time.

A real life lesson. I can sit here and read every book made on making my life my sadhana, but the real learning comes when I must apply it. It is relaxing to sit and read and feel all high on life, but when the going gets tough is when the transformations are made.

That’s the problem with being a book addict. I am a spiritual book addict, always thinking that reading the next book is going to get me another step closer to God. I have been doing this with bhakti. Trying to read about it, and really get the method down. I never feel like I can grasp it fully though. I get these bits and pieces, and when I try to piece together how I think I should be doing it, it just feels off. Page 63 came to me at a beautiful time. Ram Dass explains bhakti in 10 words, and it all makes sense.

“You just love until you and the beloved become one”

I can put my books away now. I can slow down now. God isn’t in any of these books. God is in me. By reading as many books as possible, I am not going to get to God any faster. “You’ve got to go at the rate that you can go”. No rush. So lately, when I have a few moments to spare, while I would normally read, I just close my eyes. And I love. I love my husband, my children, my family, my friends, and all of you that I have not yet met on this plane, until we become one. In that, I find God.

Everything is my sadhana.

Everything.

I can use life as my sadhana. I have to use life as my sadhana. That is simply all there is to do. No more “once I get some quiet time to myself, I will do sadhana”. Just do it now. What’s that? You are too worked up to do sadhana? Well, that is the perfect time to do it.

As long as I am alive, I am doing sadhana. My daily life is my offering to God, to the One. When I can look at the world in this way, there is nowhere for negative actions to work their way in. No hiding. My life is an open book, its pages turning colors from the rays of the light within us all.

Well, according to page 56: ALL of my acts will be consecrated. Now this is a hard one for me to hold. I like the ring it has to it, but REALLY? How is this possible? As I read this, my mind does an insta-shift to all the actions I have taken that should be condemned, not consecrated. And just as quickly as the guilt starts to appear, all of a sudden I become bathed in a river of Love. I think of Maharaj-ji. He knew all of the thoughts that were going on in everyone’s mind, many of them not so pure, and loved them through it all. Just as my mind begins to question how anyone could love certain aspects of who I am, I remember that those things are not what they are loving, because they are not me.

My husband helps me to remember this all the time. I will get upset over some silly thing, and make a mess out of the afternoon over it. I will get cranky, and just be a completely icky person to be around. Snapping at my husband, snapping at my kids- nothing good happening within me. Then my husband will just walk up to me, put his loving arms around me, and give me a soft kiss. How could he possibly want to kiss me after the way I had been acting? Why is he not upset with me? Because he is my live-in Maharaj-ji. He is loving that which is beyond my personality. He knows that my actions are not who I am, and, with a kiss, is able to bring me back to that place of pure love.

Sometimes I push him away, pushing God away with him. Too closed to open up. Stuck in samsara. But as I begin to use his kiss to wake up, I feel something. A shift. His kiss is the kiss of the Divine, a tender reminder of who I am.

Sometimes I feel that what is going on in my life is decided by the pages I am reading in Be Here Now for the week. This week is one of those weeks.

I have been feeling completely inadequate as a mother. Having two little balls of love is so much different than just one. When I had only one baby, I could devote all of my time and energy to him. Now, I must split it. This leaves me with feelings of never giving each one the love that I want to, or the attention they deserve. My mind is constantly going in a million directions to try and meet the needs of the both of them.

That’s the paradox. By thinking so hard and worrying so much about how to give enough to each child, I am neglecting what it is that they really need. The only thing my children need from me is my “here and now-ness”. When my mind is too busy rushing about, I am in no state be a good mother.

After putting my 2 year old down for a nap, I plopped myself on our couch with my 2 month old. I leaned him up on the couch so we could see each other. As he was gazing with his deep blue eyes into mine, I was contemplating what to do about this weeks post, and worrying about not getting time to write. How was I supposed to write anything? I am so exhausted I can’t even think of what to do for dinner, let alone think of something to write. I can’t write while Canyon is awake, I need to spend some eye gazing time with him while his brother is sleeping. This is special time.

Then, I woke up for a moment.

Special? How special can it be if all I am doing is thinking about other things? So I stopped, and looked deep into the windows of Canyon’s soul.  When it clicked, my eyes filled with tears. Canyon was all smiles. This is all he wants. This is all Clavey (my 2 year old) wants, too. For me to be with them, in the moment. They are always in the moment. Surrendering to the flow. I need to meet them there. They are here to show me the way, I just need to follow them to that special place. That’s the place where the magic happens. Or is it this place? Either way, I want to be there, or here.

When I am able to fully be here now with my children, the feelings of inadequacy completely dissolve. The moment becomes perfect. Sure, my baby may be crying as I am patiently trying to let Clavey put his own shoes on (which he cannot do, but if he thinks I help him in any way, all hell breaks loose, so this ends up taking a while). But if I am helping Clavey while stressing about Canyon, I really am not helping Clavey, or Canyon, or anyone for that matter. I am outside the moment. So when I am with Clavey, I am with Clavey. And when I am with Canyon, I am not worrying about ignoring Clavey. I am fully with him. And boy does it feel amazing!

This week, I wrote on the little whiteboard we have on our refrigerator “WORK ON YOURSELF”.

It has been a rough week with my husband gone on a fire, and it shows in my parenting. So now, every time I get my stuff hit, I treat the situation like a mirror in which all the things that I need to work on are being reflected back to me. Clavey smears butter all over the counter : I need to work on patience. That, and my sense of humor. I get uptight when Clavey wakes up for the 6^th time at night to nurse : I need to get my calm center going. Once I can treat each situation like this, I can feel so much within me shift. I also realize how much I need to work on!

Sitting here now, Canyon asleep in my arms (yes, I have to type with one hand), I feel a surge of energy rush through my body. I know that right now, this moment is enough. In that knowing, my energy centers open, the blockages cleared. It may be a fleeting moment, sucked up by some worry or another, but it will be back. The more I work on it, the more often it will return. Until some day, it will stay.  And when it stays, I will be gone.

Namaste’

When I first read Be Here Now, I put little sticky tabs on all the pages that touched me deeply. I do not know why I did this, because by the time I was done, I had marked almost every page, save maybe 10 or 15. After I was done reading the book, I left all the tabs in it. I have re-read the book probably 20 or so times, and always had those darn sticky things in there. After a while, I noticed that if I came to an unmarked page, I would read through it much quicker than if it were marked, and not give it much thought. So I decided to remove the tabs. But I remember that page 40 was unmarked. I never let my soul soak in what page 40 had said. When I read it the other day, I wanted to cry! Ouspensky touched me directly in my heart when he said:

“If man gives way to all his desires, or panders to them, there will be no inner struggle, in him, so ‘friction’ no fire. But if, for the sake of attaining a definite aim, he struggles with the desires that hinder him – he will then create a fire which will gradually transform his inner world into a single whole”

Melt my heart Ouspensky. So it is okay that on this spiritual journey, I often feel great despair? I am not supposed to feel blissful all the time? You mean this pain is actually doing something? *sigh of relief*

I have been feeling extremely overwhelmed in these past few days. My husband left to work on a fire (he works for the Forest Service), and so I am home alone with my kids for the next 2 weeks. It is hard work! There are moments when I feel like I am going to just fall apart. So I have been really working with these moments. Why do I feel like this? It is simple, and it comes down to one word:

DESIRE

I have been in a constant state of desiring things to be other than they are. I desire my husband to be here to help me, and being that there is no way to fulfill that, I am suffering! So now, after noticing an anxious moment creep up, I stop, and just let myself  become okay with the moment, not wanting to change it. Once I can find that place, it feels so good! I can now look at this situation as a great opportunity to get my calm center going.

This state of existence is so impermanent! It is amazing as to what we get hung up on. Let’s break out of these self imposed prisons. Once we can take life less seriously, the game gets kind of fun. Instead of being stressed out over taking care of my children, I rejoice in the beauty of each moment with them, because this trip I get to spend with them is so short!

LOVE LOVE LOVE!

Oh, and if I still marked pages, I would definitely mark page 40.