Ram Dass Now

ALWAYS THERE

Question is :

can you see it? pg 102

I was suddenly fascinated by it and couldn’t understand why all of the people in the cars around me and walking the sidewalks weren’t  showing signs of the jaw dropping awe I was feeling.

“Look! Look! “I wanted to yell! “Isn’t it incredible?”

Then I really saw what was going on. They were me. I was seeing how often I walk and drive through  my days oblivious to the the opportunities to move into that place of wonder and awe and gratitude….and yet, it is always there.

I sort of forget about it…although less and less these days . But when by Grace I take notice of those always-there moments…the soft-glow moon, a delicate, intricate  tangle of tree branches silhouetted against a night sky, the warm, compassionate eyes of  an elderly lady when I dropped my coffee while rushing out a door, an unsolicited hug from my son… if I notice, then I am transformed. Taken from the mundane to the magical, from unconsciousness to awareness and gratitude, from my head to my heart.

It’s that way for me as I walk this path of devotion. I can forget sometimes to remember.

love-serve-remember …a simple path to peace.

So even though I never sat in the heavy heat of an ashram courtyard in India chanting and holding  Maharaj-ji’s sun-baked feet in my hands and I didn’t ride on that bus full of love deciding where to look for him only to discover that there was never anything to decide……I don’t have to be there to go there…It is just always here. The love is always right where I am.

I am deeply grateful to all of those who did spend time with Maharaj-ji and brought back the stories and experiences  and that they so generously share . …And the love.

I lose myself in that love. It feels to me like the “limitless, undying love that shines around me like a million suns “ that John Lennon sings of in my favorite Beatles song Across the Universe. And it …”calls me on and on”.

I have no explanation for this sweet flow of love I am opened to by my connection and devotion to a man I never met and who never told anyone to do anything. I only know that he is always there.

I feel it. I know it. I am forever grateful.

JAI GURU DEV

She fell into the deep space between the words and was met by the unopened hand of fate.

At times I have let go into the what-is-ness, the OM, the void …free falling, unfettered into now. Going nowhere and everywhere all at once.

Moments that moved form the “form into the formless ”  pg 93

Once when I was about 17-years-old I was riding on a bus. I’d been meditating lots and feeling really free. I was at the back of the bus enjoying the ride one moment and then… there was no time and I was feeling incredible, heart-bursting love for all of the faces around me. And  then… there was no me looking at that but just the LOVE. I was it and it was me…all of it.

Another time…standing outside the Dakota building on Central Park West just days after John Lennon died. Thousands of voices sung through the tears … “all we are saying, is give peace a chance”. My heart was broken open both by the deep grief I was feeling and the tsunami of love in the aftermath of the earth quaking news of his death. I felt all of us as one heart singing out from the same soul place.

Krishna Das chanting me into beyond the beyond with Hey Ma Durga or Bhagavan Das taking me to the edge and back with deep, rhythmic, trance-y , incantational Jai Kali Ma

All of it a journey to my heart.

Why this matters is because it opens my heart to a deep compassion for all of us and helps inform the way I live my life.

In all of these moments “something gets so esencey you feel you are touching God”. (Pg 92).And in that space there is nothing to do. It just IS. And we all are it.

Moving from Form to Formless…from Being Here Now to Being Love Now.

For me, the pure ideas…the essency part of what is manifest was the bridge. Those essency parts were accessed by going fully into and beyond the form. Complete presence. I only get there by surrendering to Grace…by getting out of my own way.

It’s like going in through the out door.

Sometimes it happens through joy…sometimes through pain.

Moment

IT HAS HAPPENED NOW.

NO MORE WONDERING ABOUT THE WHEN OR HOW OF SUCH MOMENTS.

ANOTHER STEP TOWARD LIFE’S FULL EXPRESION OF KARMIC MAYHEM.

NEVER WOULD I HAVE IMAGINED THE MAGNITUDE OF THE FORCE OF SUCH AN INVISIBLE WIND THAT WOULD BLOW FROM FATE’S OVALLED MOUTH

TO SEND ME SOARING..FEET LONG SINCE FORGETTING THE PRESS OF EARTH

LIFTED…I THOUGHT…AND CARRIED AS IF ON A WAVE OF WORDS AND DOINGS…LIFE AND DEATH…SO POWERFUL AS TO TSUNAMI THE ME OF NOW INTO OBLIVION

HOPING FOR THAT I SUPPOSE

AN ANNIHILATION OF THIS CURRENT CONFIGURATION OF ME

INSTEAD…HERE REMAINS ALL OF MY ME-NESS

NOW BATTERED, NAKED, DRIPPING WET AND SHIVERING AS THE WAVE RETREATS

ME- STANDING STRONGER SOMEHOW FOR HAVING BEEN TAKEN ON THAT RIDE

There and back again.  It is all grace.

I am watching the waves from a window.

My mother’s 80^th birthday was this week and I brought her here to Maine to see the ocean. She brought my children and I here for a week every summer after summer of their childhood years, but for the past two years her health wouldn’t allow the long trip from her Pennsylvania home. She wanted to see the ocean again and although summer is long gone and this seaside town is quiet and shuttered, the ocean never notices.

I got us a room, with a full ocean view and as my mother sleeps peacefully I am sitting beside the window watching the steady roll of wave after wave break into white foam rising from the still, expansive steel blue/gray waters. Perpetual, peaceful motion.

The line between the sky and sea is barely perceptible because of the early November clouds and I wonder…is there really a line anyway? I find my breathing slowing to match the cadence of the flow and the steady roar of the waves I hear muffled through the glass of the window. In all of my visits to the beach, I have never stayed in a place with an ocean view. There’s something so different about watching the show from here. It takes me out of the scene a bit to a witnessing place.

It all just is. The ocean, the sky, the sounds, my mother sleeping, me sitting here typing….all one connected happening in the now.

Eternal moments…  I am “calmly watching this drama unfold” BHN pg.88

This past week I attended a memorial service for my uncle who passed away recently. It was held at the sweet, little country church where he and my aunt took me  on Sundays when I visited them as a child. I loved coming to stay at their house in the mountains where I could spend hours in the heavy, scented woods beside a trickling stream and come back to  the house to find the best chocolate milkshake on the planet in a frosty glass mug made just for me. My uncle was so gracious and taught me much about the ways of  kindness.

The memorial service was a traditional, Catholic mass and all of the words, gestures and emotions of the prayers of my youth flowed easily from inside me without the least bit of thought. It all came from a deeper place. The entire mass was sung with much call and response and I smiled at the recognition of this being perhaps the birthplace of my love of kirtan. The devotional rituals of the mass still  take me into the rich mystery and magic of the divinity within my own heart…a place of loving awareness as Ram Dass says.

At the end of the service, family members were invited to light a candle to commemorate the soul’s passing. I walked to the altar and my hand shook as I held the long, slender white candle to light it from the center candle’s flame. It took a long time for the flame to catch , but once it did I placed it upright in the circle of sand by then filled with many other glowing candles. I said a silent prayer to my uncle and cried softly.

I stepped back from the altar and felt my heart warmed by the sight of all of those small candles burning together as one bright light in testament to a life. I was brought again to a place outside the drama of my life and to the peaceful center of the moment.

The circle of life, the round tripi-ness of it all, the wave after eternal wave emanating from the still center….beautiful.

I received an early finished copy of BE LOVE NOW from the publishers (thank you!) and have read to page 60 as of about an hour ago. I’d been looking at it on my desk for days longing to get started reading and finally found a time late last night. Sleep deprivation, parental obligations,hunger and the need to get blogging here gave me barely enough incentive to put it down and I can’t wait to get back to it. I was totally immersed from the beginning pages where Rameshwar Das so sweetly relates his story of personal connection to Ram Dass and the ensuing journey to his heart.

There is so much in this new book that coalesces years of my life experiences and seeking. While reading the words I hear Ram Dass’s warm, loving voice in my head and I feel myself sitting in rapt attention in front of him. His deep presence is palpable through the words and wisdom he shares. I was totally immersed from the beginning pages where Rameshwar Das so sweetly relates his story of personal connection to Ram Dass and the ensuing journey to his heart

While reading I’ve been trying to integrate this new journey Be Love Now is taking me on with the pages of Be Here Now and I’ve  found it to be an effortless intention. It’s as if the profound simplicity and spaciousness of Be Here Now is filled in with layer upon layer of delicious detail and personal insights that help me bring together years of my own adventures on this bhakti marg, the road to Love. And I am thrilled that beyond the integration in this new book Ram Dass also offers more possiblities for opening to that Love.

I read on the pages of Be Here Now that there’s nothing to do, nowhere to go, you’re sitting here always. The cosmic joke is that we all struggle to get somewhere, but in reality…as I read on page 60 of Be Love Now, “When you stop for a moment, when you dive into the presence of this moment, the drama goes on, but it is all just love”.

And on page 26, “It’s a being thing not a doing thing”.

This is not to say that doing things isn’t part of the equation. I know I am here in this life to be in my humanity to its fullest and with all the passion I can muster. But doing so with a deeper connection to being makes it a more joyful and fulfilling dance. I am growing into the sense that each moment is infused with love and that  I am that loving awareness as Ram Dass reminds me in Be Love Now.

There is such freedom and peace in knowing I don’t have to be or do anything or go anywhere to reside in that ocean of love.

It is …Here Right Now Always.

Ram Dass shares,

“I used to feel I could only get that love in India but now all I have to do is plumb the depth of the moment. “  Be Love Now p. 16

These words, “plumb the depth of the moment” create an excitement in me about the possibilities to explore those depths. I am grateful also for the many ways available to me to bring myself into that moment awareness through darshan, kirtan and by opening my heart to the eternal flow of Maharaj-ji’s grace and love.

I could so easily go on and on here carried by a wave of gratitude for this new opportunity to deepen in my  life. I feel myself on the verge of veering off into another whole blog about the darshan and kirtan threads that tie it all together for me, but Ram Dass does a much better job of explaining all of this and so much more. In the interest of actually getting this posted today and since the next 236 pages of Be Love Now are mine yet to discover I will end here now….at a new beginning place.

Thank you Ram Dass and Rameshwar Das. I love you.

I am about to set out toward the Cambridge, MA area today to see my daughter at college and spend an evening of chant with David Newman, Girish and Donna Delory. Blissy day. I love Cambridge with all of the intellectual vibe and international influence. It is such a mix of  out–of-the-box and status quo. I have spent hours in The Harvard Coop absorbing the constant flow of languages and cultures and mindsets evidenced by the variety of books that make their way to the check-out.
I lurk behind stacks of books eavesdropping on conversations hoping to overhear something from the mouths of one of those brilliant minds that will open me up to a new perspective.

“BECAUSE WHEN YOU KNOW HOW TO LISTEN EVERYBODY IS THE GURU”. page 78

The Coop is near the top of my long list of favorite people-watching venues. I can sip my latte while indulging my voyeuristic tendencies and let my mind wander uninterrupted for hours.
During that meandering mind travel I often find my way to thoughts of Ram Dass and his days at Harvard. I try sometimes open my mind’s eye to see him all of those years ago strolling the streets of Cambridge or through Harvard Yard. With his quick mind, eloquence and radiant smile beaming …impressive and engaging. If I had met him there all of those years ago I wonder,would his words then have resonated in my heart as they do now? I know I would have loved him immediately. I just know. But I wonder if my pure seeking soul would have recognized that this man would come to be one of my closest companions on the journey of my life.

He has led me through words and example from Be Here Now to Be Love Now.

A long time ago Ram Dass gave me a mala with a single thread from Maharaj-ji’s blanket just as he had given to Parvati. He must have passed along thousands of those threads over decades with each one connecting perhaps to that thin thread of ego that was Maharaj-ji and creating thread by thread a blanket of love. A simple gesture with profound results. Another example of the gentle wisdom that is Ram Dass.

I love the imagery of the words, “ a subtle thread to keep in contact”. I so often refer to the thread of connection that runs through my life. It is a steady connection to the deep, abiding love of the divine that is always there.
The weaving of that thread through my busy minutes,days and years  is creating the unique pattern of my life with all of its imperfections and beauty. The thread is subtle and pure and although I am very much involved in my human life and all of the duality,ups and downs, joys and sorrows, successes and mistakes, etc. I am  never disconnected from that thread.
It is my lifeline and I am grateful. Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram

I grew up along the banks of the big, beautiful Susquehanna river. Its wide expanse is bordered by a variety of trees, bushes and animals sometimes submerged and re-emerging in a new form. An ever-changing scene of non-delineated is-ness. Always changing but also always the same overall happening.

Years ago the river was contained by small dikes that allowed an unobstructed view all along the edge. Now the view is compromised by large walls put in place to hold back its raging waters when they rise to flood.

I would go to the river often to be comforted by its ever-flowing, steady presence and found solace in knowing it was always there. It is one of my sacred places.I could sit on those banks and watch its purposeful meanderings for hours and the concerns of my heart and head would be carried downstream as I contemplated the mystery and magic of it all.

Its murky, brown waters although often calm and serene would sometimes become a raging torrent. But no matter the mood the waters flowed. I could surrender to that flow and trust that I too could be carried along the currents to whatever lies ahead if I could find a way to trust the river…surrender to the meanderings and forward moving momentum of my life…let it takes its course………..but not by being passive.

The river is full of life, creative force and has definite direction. As it journeys along it is also stirring things up and carrying resources and creating life-giving energy while at the same time just being a river flowing.

I love that river. It is part of who I am.

Last night just before sleeping I re-read the pages 64-70 of Be Here Now and asked for guidance about how to express how my connection to Maharaj-ji informs my life. My dreams took me to the banks of my beloved river and I awoke to the realization that Maharaj-ji is a larger expression of what was revealed to me through my experiences on the river banks.

The love, reverence and awe I feel for both the river and Maharaj-ji opens me up to loving myself and others because in their presence I become acutely aware of eternity and its perfection. Both the river and Maharaj-ji seem to flow in a timeless dimension where all is as it should be. When I sit in that presence I feel a deep peace and I recognize that all of us are part of that perfection just the way we are.

I live many hours drive from the Susquehanna now but the experience is with me always.

“Maharaj-ji is not further away from you at this moment than the thought you’re thinking now..” page 64

Just this morning I walked out of the my new, little apartment and walked past the big home I just moved from.  I saw the new owner’s car in the driveway and had a moment of the sinking feeling of loss that comes from attachment. I kept walking with my sadness around the corner on this gorgeous autumn day in New England and was greeted by a huge, vibrant rainbow. It was an immediate reminder that although I may not be on the banks of that river anymore, I am always resting in the eternal flow of this beautiful life and all is as it should be.

p.s. I’ve been sitting in a coffee shop for the last hour typing this since I haven’t been wired for internet at my new place yet. Just as I was writing about seeing the rainbow a man at the counter exclaimed  to someone, “Can you believe that rainbow is still visible in the sky?” ………..…always there.

It amazes me that a man who lived and died many thousands of miles away from me and who I never met or was even aware existed until many years after he left his body has always been by my side. I just didn’t notice until my heart made room. Opened.

I had for most of my life been looking outside myself for something, anything that would reconcile the rift between what I felt was real and I saw presented as reality. The world was telling me I had to be or do or have something in order to be loved. What I have since learned is that I can rest in a place of unconditional love and from that place I am free to explore all of the ways of being in the world in a lighter way.

My first conscious introduction to Maharaj-ji came after his death through stories told by Ram Dass. I remember listening to and reading those stories and wishing desperately to be in India dancing and chanting or sitting beside him. I longed to experience that bliss first-hand. It took some time for me to hear the truth in what Ram Dass was saying all along which was that I didn’t have to go anywhere to be there.

That love is always where (and when) I am. Here and now.

After many years of peeling away at the onion of my life and the shedding of a skin that began to constrict my life force  I was ready to notice. Maharaj-ji tapped me on the head and I turned to look in his depth-pool eyes of love. I have not looked away since.

Grace.

My gratitude and awe deepen daily. And the through a series of mind-tweaking, reality- bending Maharaj-ji  lilas and the ongoing flow of support and sustenance offered by teachers, kirtan wallas and fellow travelers on the path I am finding my way of being in the world that is also connected beyond.

In the words of Rumi…“Only from the heart can you touch the sky.”

Maharaj-ji is that connection for me. I keep falling deeper and deeper into his Love…into Love with him…..and I feel him with me in such a very real way that sometimes I think I am insane. I have experienced a deepening of that love in a way I never could have anticipated and I feel myself literally held in his arms. The longing to be near him is insatiable although he is always right where I am. Nothing matters more than my connection to him and that connection permeates every aspect of my life.

And now…even when the next layer of ‘my stuff’ shows up and I forget to let the love be there and I am suffering…I have only to put myself back in his presence …by using the tools I have gathered to move out of my head and into my heart and then there he is time and time again to let me in. My heart is so full of gratitude for the Grace that led me to this path.. my path …and for all of the people who have made themselves available to light the way.  My first hug from Ram Dass back in the early 90′s was like being welcomed home although at the time I had no idea it was Maharaj-ji who embraced me that day.

I know that there are as many different ways to find peace and connection to the divine as there are people on this planet and I believe all are valid and that ultimately lead to one love.

“We’re all just walking each other home”  -Ram Dass

This magical mystery tour of the life we all live keeps me in a constant state of wonder and awe. I’ve been thinking about the fragility of my human body and mind and the eternal nature of my soul and how moving into my heart  seems to bring it all together.

It is as if the heart bridges the gap between the temporal and the eternal…not only bridges the gap…it is it all.

Om Kali Om Kali Om Kali Om

I am sitting amidst the chaos of a house half-packed chanting with Bhagavan Das from his “Now” CD…

“Jai Kali Ma, Jai Kali Ma, take from me all that is not free…”

Anytime I’ve felt the need to accelerate the burn, dive in for the ‘crisp trip’…when the veils part enough and I see the show isn’t the whole story it is then I call out to Kali to bring it on.

This usually happens when disillusionment is brought on by the implosion of some expectation of how my life ‘should’ be happening.

She brings grace in the form of chaos. Sometimes I need that fierce grace.

The Mahanirvana Tantra says: “Just as all colors disappear in black, so all names and forms disappear in her.”

The energy that seduces and induces desires and then swallows them completely.

She is it all.

I love the magic and have have grown to respect the madness for all of the energy it carries.

Letting that shakti burn away  defenses and pretenses leaves me raw and vulnerable and open to receive.

She brings grace in the form of chaos and then is there to pick up the pieces.

The LOVE…ever present “Beyond the Beyond” it awaits.

Resting in that love feels good.

“The feel is real” as Bhagavan Das says.

Jai Ma Durga!

Chanting Hey Ma Durga in a room full of people with Krishna Das brings  me to tears every time because I feel us all…like one collective primal soul singing out to the universe from a place of tenderness and pain about the almost unbearable beauty of all that is.

I’m posting the following from the liner notes of his CD Breath of Heart because I think it is so beautiful and speaks to the message. (I hope this is ok with KD.)

Surround me with your loving arms…hold me in your heart.

Let me know that I am loved

and that I can love.

Show me that no matter where I go

That I come and go in You.

I am never out of your loving presence.

That you are the smile behind the smile,

the touch behind the touch

The kiss behind the kiss…

You are the constant presence that I forget until I remember

and when I remember my Self, I remember You.

I sing your Name. What else can I think of? You ARE Love.

And I AM You.

Thank you Krishna Das and Bhagavan Das for singing my heart open.

“When you meet a being who is centered you always know it. You always feel a kind of calm emanation. It always touches you in that place.”( pg.47)

I have no idea who the guy in the drawing on page 47 is, but I met him this week or at least it looked very much like him. The really interesting thing about it is that I hadn’t looked at page 47 yet when he showed up in my day.

The man was entirely present in a remarkable and memorable way.

It was the tenth day of the ten days allowed post-registration to get my car inspected and I was feeling a bit frantic in a too-much-to-do-too-little-time sort of way. I took a corner fast and swung the car up to the bay door of a quick-change oil place with a sign that said “We do State Inspections”. I was leaned over digging through my glove compartment looking for  my registration papers while at the same time trying to call my son on my cell phone when he walked to the side of my car. After trying twice to open the window to speak with him (I had managed to open both back windows) I finally flung open the door in frustration and leaned out to talk. He was entirely present. He patiently listened to my  crazy rambles.  He then  slowly and with intention compassionately explained that the shop was closing for the day and they wouldn’t be able to inspect my car.

It didn’t matter because that wasn’t really why I was there.

The contrast between his calm demeanor and my frenetic random expending of energy was so dramatic that I wanted to forget about the car inspection and ask him to go for a walk. He touched me in that place where I feel calm…that place that was waiting for me to return to after I was done doing my mad dash to nowhere. He helped me remember.
It seems this gentle man showed up in my life on just the right page…both literally and figuratively. He was a real-life example of how being that “calm center” can help others find it in themselves.

I kept seeing him in my mind’s eye and feeling that calm emanation and its effects on me. I also thought it ironic that he worked at quick change oil place. I love that the universe has a sense of humor!

Later that evening I had a small existential crisis while brushing my teeth. I had a moment where I felt like I moved completely into now and it startled me. For a split second I felt everything around me in me and vice-versa. Everything just was. Time didn’t stop. Time just was. I didn’t disappear and things around me didn’t melt away but there was a different quality to my perception.

Clearer and freer.

Maybe it happened because I started my tooth brushing that night by paying close attention to the process. I slowed down enough to notice how cool the tube felt in my hand and how the little ridges on the top gripped the fleshy part of my thumb and index finger as I applied pressure and twisted. I breathed in deeply the smell of peppermint as the white paste settled into the bristles of the wet brush the way wet sand held in a hand oozes through fingers.
I slowly looked up from the toothbrush and my eyes met my eyes in the mirror. Wow! I looked deeply into those eyes that looked into me. I wasn’t looking at me in the mirror and I wasn’t me looking in the mirror. It all just was.

“Is-ness” (pg 46). A fleeting glimpse of deep calm.

The pages of Be Here Now provide a framework for working with my everyday experiences with the intention of waking up and infuses it all with wonder and meaning.It all becomes sacred.

Thank you Ram Dass.

I have to share that as I was working on this page Todd Rundgren’s song “I Saw the Light” just happened to play on the radio. Seems appropriate.

Todd Rundgren-I Saw the Light

I’m in the process of moving from a home I’ve lived in for years to a much smaller apartment. There’s nothing quite like sorting through years of accumulated life-stuff to bring up issues of attachment and desire.

Sorting through everything from dishes, books (many!) and furniture to boxes of my kids baby clothes and oh-so-precious drawings from kindergarten and deciding what I can keep and what I need to let go of is a journey into the crazy way my mind connects the ‘stuff’ of my life to who I am.

Who would I be and what would my life mean if those things that are attached to memories were gone? And won’t the attachment to the memories still be there? What is the desire that is being fulfilled by hanging onto those things? And is it truly necessary to get rid of all of the stuff in order to get free of the attachment and desire?

I’m confused really about how to be fully in the here and now and yet maintain a healthy connection to the memories and things that do in fact define me. I know my spirit exists outside the things and circumstances of my life. However, I also believe my life is infused with that spirit in every moment and that when I leave this body the life experiences I have had will be in some way incorporated into that spirit body.

Is that just my ego being “attached to this particular time-space locus” (pg 38)? Or is that faith?

I know I don’t have to rid myself of all worldy goods and go live in a cave to be free. I know it is perfectly fine to have things around me that evoke memories both happy and sad …they open my heart. I also know that there is a difference between needing to hang onto stuff (and thoughts) and letting them be there without attaching to them.

I can get too much in my head about all of this. It seems that when my heart feels too much my mind thinks it is time to step in and take control.  It is then that I take myself for a walk.

Just the other day I was doing one of those walks to shift back from head to heart.I was listening to and watching the sounds and sights of seasons shifting.The soft winds created a rustling noise in the dry-leaf trees and the squirrels were being blown about on the limbs dropping acorns to the road below with soft thuds. I was watching the squirrels as they frantically rushed about trying to stock up for winter while they were at the same time munching some of the stash to fatten up. And I watched a single gorgeous chrimson leaf let go from a tree and swirl to the ground. It all seemed to be happening just as it should with nobody figuring out how it should be.

So as I sit here now…stuck between hanging on and letting go, I am reminded that I have no say in when that leaf will fall. What I can do is trust that the tree knows the perfect moment.