Ram Dass Now

All roads point within.

*****

I’ve been in a smackdown with my thoughts and emotions, attempting to plan and to understand a picture beyond what my pea brain can actually understand.

I write “morning pages” as a way to pour out the cobwebs of fear and judgment with which I awake in the morning. This morning I was, indeed, pouring with them. Perfect for Halloween: fear, fear, fear [I'm writing this on Halloween, preparing for the week ahead]. Julia Cameron, in her book The Artist’s Way, recommends that one does not re-read morning pages – at least for two months.

So this morning, after writing, and calming down in the process, praise Jah, I looked back two months in my notebook, hoping to see something brighter, if I’m being honest. And yet, there it was, almost the same chant: fear, fear, fear. And also, two months back, anger.

While I was writing this morning I saw (remembered, woke up to the fact) that inside is the only way to go. Quieting the mind, for me, is it.

I’ve been reading Be Love Now (***Released TODAY, Tuesday Nov. 2!!!). Ram Dass is speaking right to me when he says: “I couldn’t get to my spiritual heart through my rational mind.”

About six weeks ago, I wrote about the arrival of my beau coming from another country. I was panicked, as I was driven by my (ir)rational mind. Now, weeks later, I find myself panicking again, fearful of his departure back to his home country, which – to my limited mind – seems like another planet, inaccessible.

This process is not about thinking things out, I come to see.

My judgments, my ego-tripping, my attempts to plan and to know what the future holds or to try to drive the future in any way — all futile and hung up on a desperate mind, clinging to an image of importance that simply cannot stand against an open heart, against the field of a quiet mind.

See, when I’m not engaged in intimate relationships, I have a sweet quiet mind and a heart, languid in its openness. But get a mirror of “another” close to me, and all hell breaks loose. In my mind.

It takes it all so dang seriously.

Earlier this week as I’d been begging for a paradigm shift because I couldn’t stand the suffering I was putting myself through, I found freedom even in the words “I hate my life.”

Point being that when all hell breaks loose, when I’m hating my life, when I’m forgetting my practices and become focused on what seems to be outward (such as another person and the context our relationship seems to be situated in), eventually, out of grace or just being fed up with the aching mind, I remember:

GO  .  IN  .  IN .  IN .  IN

(BHN, p. 85)

Nothing is about the other person, nor is it personal. My personal grasping for love and affection are reminiscent of the little girl whose mother was outta there when the girl was just small, and as the circumstances prepare to shift (i.e., my man prepares to return to New Zealand for now), I freak. I feel like I’m dying. I’m terrified of something that hasn’t happened.

There’s the part of me, then, that says, “Go for it! Die!” Not literally, not physically, of course, but more in the sense of, “Bust on through!”

Meanwhile, the early pages of Be Love Now resonate so much with me. Ram Dass: “The more I gave up my desire for personal love, the less distance there was between his being and mine, and I felt much closer to him.”

We know it. We forget it. We write it so we can remind ourselves and each other. And ultimately, all roads lead within. And then we get to sit there, lightly smiling, relieved, exhaling. Breathing easy.

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Pages 79-87 is my second favorite section of this book. If you read my post last week, where I was frustrated about worldly/spiritual and sacred/profane, you will totally understand how these pages resolve much of my difficulty. I am trying to think of things to write about these wonderful pages, but honestly I can’t. I like what is written on these pages much better than any serious restatement I could make or digestion I could render. So naturally, I thought I’d write a silly poem.

Be Here Now: the poem.

Don’t have a cow. Remember BE HERE NOW.
Or have a cow if a cow you’ll allow.
But make a vow to steer your bow
to this moment, this presence, to the now.
You ask all these questions,
saying how? how? how?
Don’t you see, you are she and she is thou?
All there is is here and now.

Believe oh believe that you are well-endowed
As human, a mind, a cat, a meow.
But the mind makes bombs go POW! CRAUOW! BLAOW!
Well, we do the best we can when we’re here now.
But the newsman shouts “Housing is down, and so is the Dow!”
And there is nothing to do. So BE HERE NOW.

Don’t get attached. Sure, say “Wow!”
And don’t go so far as to tell world “Ciao”
The Tao is the way and the way is the Tao.
So, like, here we are. Like, sooo here and now.
Dig your roots or learn to plow
But always remember, BE HERE NOW.
Read this poem, f-f-f-f-furl your brow?
Knock knock. Who’s there? NowNowNowNaNaNaNowNow.

- bt

_________________

PS
I just can’t help but hear The Grateful Dead’s “The Wheel” when I read this section of BHN:
The wheel is turning and you can’t slow down,
You can’t let go and you can’t hold on,
You can’t go back and you can’t stand still,
If the thunder don’t get you then the lightning will.

Won’t you try just a little bit harder,
Couldn’t you try just a little bit more?
Won’t you try just a little bit harder,
Couldn’t you try just a little bit more?

Round, round robin run round, got to get back to where you belong,
Little bit harder, just a little bit more,
A little bit further than you gone before.

Small wheel turn by the fire and rod,
Big wheel turn by the grace of God,
Every time that wheel turn ’round,
Bound to cover just a little more ground.

The last time I did a Vipassana course, I nearly lost my mind.

The standard Vipassana meditation course is 10 days of silence and lots of meditation. And that’s about it. The days are broken up with walking to and from the meditation hall between hour-long sits to go to the bathroom and get some water, meals in the dining hall with other hungry people alone with their minds, a quick nap here or there, some stretching alone in your room, etc., but never is there a time when you’re going outside of yourself.

One of the most profound aspects of the course is that you have no one to talk to about your troubles or the stories running in your head that are dressed up as problems and woes. There’s no one to get on board with how bad or troublesome any of it is. And you’re just left to chew it over, to plot and scheme and fantasize and attempt to solve, . . . all when there’s NOTHING you can DO about it.

No phones, no notebooks to write in, no computers, no iPod. Just the campus, the cushion, your body and your breath.

So the first time I went through the 10-day course, I knew it was the hardest thing I’d ever chosen to do, but I managed. I was impressed and proud of myself and found, for the next year, that my overall sense of peace had increased.

I stopped in about six months later for a 3-day course for old students, and as I wrote about in another blog, I only freaked out once.

Then, a year after my first 10-day course, I went back for another.

I was hesitant this time, and within the first 24 hours, I was losing it.

I cried the entire course, and twice I ended up in the teacher’s quarters talking with her (I will always be grateful for her care).  Besides recommending that I go ahead and take fruit and milk for dinner, ease up on the really deep practice at one point and also get a little extra sleep, she asked me the perfect question: Continue reading

When I was a young child I used to hide in my room for hours and hours playing video games. I would find so much pleasure in disconnecting from the rest of the world just so I could hide in that beautiful digital fantasy. Completing one level after another only to complete the game and then start another.

In and of itself video games are fun and actually quite healthy. But as I grew older I realized that the way in which I played video games was really a symptom of not being comfortable in the moment. I would play games to avoid doing my homework and to be alone. I had so much fun even while I let my responsibilities crumble around me. Anything to get me out of the here and now. There’s the old saying “wherever you go, there you are.” That’s true unless you keep your world is made fantasy where you’re a wizard or a little Italian guy with a big mustache.

As I grew up I continued to have problems in the here and now, in just being. All sorts of manifestations of that came up, some of which I’ve touched on in previous posts. The tough part about trying to escape from yourself is that you never can, you just keep running and running. Right? Why? Because “wherever you go…”. The only thing you can do is to stop and bear witness and surrender to the now. Nothing is anybody’s fault, there’s no one to blame and nowhere to run, everything that’s ever happened has led us to now. And it’s perfect.

For the last 40 years Ram Dass has given us simple yet profound instruction on finding bliss in each moment, by simply being “here now” we have the potential to make each moment into an experience of enlightenment. Each moment is a gorgeous gift of Gods and can be perfect no matter the circumstances. Even as faith lingers, Gods love does not. Now it seems that Ram Dass has taken it even a step further, the little rascal. “Be Love Now!” It’s no wonder that Hanuman is the patron saint of this practice, Ram Dass (and by all accounts Maharaji-ji) is such a little prankster monkey. So sweet, kind, full of devotion yet always challenging us with little pranks that are fun to toy with.

“Be Love Now”. Really? All the time? Try saying that in the middle of L.A. traffic! It’s a prank – just being here here here, right now – loving now now now. Just love, all the time.

I have yet to read the new book but I can tell that it’s Ram Dass at his best. RD and Ramesshwar Das have embarked on a journey that will no doubt share wisdom and love that will inspire us all.

We’re almost finished with our 108 pages of Be Here Now. Almost. “Nobody is going anywhere” (pg 81). That’s the best part. “We’re always going to be here” doing our dance. Living our Rasa Lila. Which reminds me – I’d love someone to write about living their Rasa Lila in the Kali Yuga, how much fun is that?

Anyway, as I continue to dance my divine dance I have a new goal this week. It’s to see everyone as a divine dance partner. Even when I’m furiously impatient in line at Starbucks or at those opposing Proposition 19, I want to dance with them. And I’ve started to realize that I can even have fun with it! I can make life into a love filled video game. Wonderful. “Going back into the world” (pg 82) is a good step indeed.

But maybe I should play a few games of “Angry Birds” on the iPad too.

The Rasa Lila - the Divine Dance of Life

You are the void.

Doesn’t everyone want to wake up? That’s what’s so strange to me.

- the model was what they searched for

it was their own thought process which kept them from seeing

I say all I want to do is write and now I sit to write and I prefer to sit quietly. Not add more sounds to my mind in the forms of words, thoughts arising, making noise.

Yes, as usual, the fan is blowing overhead. Tonight it’s on a higher setting and I can hear the rough brown pages of Be Here Now rubbing together, page 75 scratching at page 76 (it was their own thought process which kept them from seeing . . . ).

And so could I possibly be falling into innocence? In so many ways my attitude is almost jaded, scowling, shaking my head. Does the ego swell before exiting? Before thinning?Ah! Assuming that jaded, scowling and head-shaking is ego! Could it not be awake?

I have the urge to try to make it all happen, whatever it is. I got up from writing to lock the door behind Andrew as he heads out to a metal show (always perfect timing on the nights I’m staying home to write), and as I came back over toward the couch, my mind went to a punch list of everything else I think I should be doing after I finish writing this (write a newsletter, work on new subscription project for my column, should, should, should). And then on the heels of that is:  “How am I supposed to do everything I want to do and also exercise and eat well and rest and quiet my mind and and and???”

So I just sit back down, breathe, type.

I straddle these worlds: mind (thought processes) and . . . what do you call the other one? Is it enlightenment?

I don’t use that word (sorry) lightly.

I don’t think it means what I thought it meant. Ha! I imagined I was hearing critters rustling in the leaves outside my front door and felt my heart rate and breath quicken and then realized, it’s more pages of BHN chirping, like a cricket rubbing its legs together.

YOU ARE ENLIGHTENED

What’s there to be done is done whether I have a thought about it or not. I’m sound asleep to think I’m – that is, little Carin – the source of any of this. It’s a funky dance.

There is no I unless it’s the great I. The great Eye. I am. But “I” am not. Carin is a costume character convinced that her story is the real deal. Like an actor in a play, not knowing he’s in a play. My skin looks good. My belly changes shape. I had a headache last night. Breathing goes through this body, out my nostrils, in my nostrils.

I think about these other characters writing here. My new buddies. My friend Blake out there, so young to love Jerry, finding feathers like the rubber snakes I found on tour. I think of you all and hear a SMASH! like a plate of glass breaking, like when Superman re-routes that nuclear missile into space and inadvertently releases Zod and his pals from the Phantom Zone.

I’m digging the metaphor. Smash ourselves out of the sleeping ego. Release from the Phantom Zone. Ahhhh . . . fly in space. Freedom. Awake. Awake. Awake.

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By the time you read this I won’t be here now. Was I ever here? Or are these words just appearing on the screen in front of you? Did anyone really write them or are they all simply arising in your consciousness in front of you right now?

Right now it seems as if my fingers are hitting warm, plastic keys, sometimes my finger tips, other times my finger nails. My boyfriend’s sitting next to me and I’m seeing the movie “Knocked Up” for the second time today.

I played it early this afternoon and fell asleep on the couch. I needed it.

Last night I had a bad dream. And it ran well into the morning. I had about seven hours of what appeared to be food poisoning and the experience was just how I’d heard it described. You feel like you’re dying – or like you want to die.

I lay in a stupor wherever I could, spending a lot of time on the rugs on the bathroom floor, pulling them together so my body wasn’t burned by the cold tile. I could barely stand and could barely stay in one place, just uncomfortable everywhere and at the same time totally exhausted and needing to sleep. And just praying that the next shit or puke would be the one that would relieve the monster in my stomach.

It was weird.

And eventually I did have that moment when the relentless feverish scraping- my-belly-from-within relented. Annica. Changing, changing, changing.

But, man, when I was in the middle of it, I only reached for the word “equanimous” [sic] once, and it flew away so quickly, I didn’t bother again. I was just tripping out and needing relief.

I heard Eckhart Tolle say today, “Why make another problem and say that you should let go of desire?” Yo.

My fear was not that I would die, but that the brutal tummy ache would go on and on. Death is surely more chill than food poisoning.

So, now, did that happen now? It’s not happening now. (Though the girl in the movie just threw up in the trashcan – pregnancy, not food poisoning.) Oy.

Why am I talking about puke?

This is just what’s up for me right now. I don’t feel the need to dig deep into a spiritual conversation because they are not separate from the experience of typing these letters (am I actually typing letters?) or throwing up or begging God for relief or masturbating or snoring.

I’m not sorry for the vomiting. It didn’t surprise me at all. Lying on the bathroom floor I thought about last week’s vampires and the “sickly and painful process” of transformation they go through. And then, after all that purging, we are clearer.

It’s been quite the day, week, month. (Did any of that actually happen? Did I write these words, or are they arising right now in your consciousness?)

Too tired to say much. Just lovin you and chillin out this evening. May the moments you read this . . . well, how are they?

For more writing from Carin (aka Carina ShantiOm), please visit www.nowstayopen.com

I go through more and more times when I’m a recluse.

I like it that way. I quiet down. Buzz with the trees. Quiet my mind.

I used to be very social and this kind of shift confuses the community. The parents. The girlfriends. People worry. People expect, because they’re used to something different.

Come, take this badge off a’ me.

There isn’t a should about this or a right or wrong to any of it. “You do what you do because that’s what the harmony of the universe requires,” (BHN, p. 54).

I do what I do because that’s what I do. I could call it living on guidance. That’s not exactly right. It’s not like an outside voice leads the way. It’s more like an internal compass that directs me in the direction the universe requires. Because it couldn’t possibly be any other way.

Even my struggles are divinely designed.

That’s not quite right either. Divinely dreamed?

Just dreamed.

To get into these places that are beyond words and description is challenging to a talker and a writer like I am.  I don’t feel like explaining what I can’t explain. We do love our metaphors.

Today I was driving and I saw in front of me on a fancy black sports car – my boyfriend would have been able to tell you the make – a license plate that read: VMPYR. Yes, just the analogy I’d been thinking of.

Did you read those Anne Rice books? I read them in high school. Was so into them that when I yawned and my eyes teared up, I thought there would be blood on my fingers when I wiped my cheeks.

Anyway,

when the humans were bit by the vampires and then drank vampire blood, they underwent a metamorphosis. It was a sickly and painful process, always explained to the fledglings by the elders that the human body was dying. The being would fall exhaustedly asleep, and after some time, the new vampire would wake up, and everything was clear and sharply focused.

I’m in that in-between stage. Sort of the purgatory between taking (as Jed McKenna calls and capitalizes it) the First Step and completely waking up. I dig it.  It’s fun and I’m focused. And at the same time bitchy and verging on insane.

Then again, those who know what I mean are the sanest people I can come across.

Sane is in the eye of the beholder.

For more writing from Carin (aka Carina ShantiOm), please visit www.nowstayopen.com

In the short video clip of Ram Dass posted on this site, he says that in the two years between his first meeting Maharajji and going back to India, in all the countless lectures he gave during that time, his “words were coated with Maharajji.” Some didn’t get it, many did. Be Here Now, the distillation of his talks from that time period, touched millions of others. Those of us who wound up in India at Maharajji’s feet heard him loud and clear—the trumpet call to wake up, the message that LSD would only get us so far on the journey, the realization that the holy books were all real, and that enlightened beings did exist and could touch our lives.

In India, they said that Ram Dass had “the gift of Saraswati.” Saraswati is the goddess who is the consort of Brahma, the Creator. She’s the muse, the portal for creative expression, such as music and poetry. Ram Dass was like a fountain whose words endlessly poured out the essence of Maharajji. And his delivery of that essence made it easy for Westerners to “get.” We could relate to him—this very smart, very funny “bad boy” who’d been kicked out of Harvard—and we could catch a glimpse, a taste, of what he had experienced in the presence of Maharajji’s unconditional love.

I know that when I initially met Ram Dass in the summer of ’69, and heard him speak to the dozen of us who were gathered in the barn at his father’s place in New Hampshire, it was the first time in my life I felt like I was getting answers instead of more questions. My search, which had led me through all the “dead white guys” of Western philosophy and psychology, alcohol, sickness, hallucinogens, and failed relationships, had finally paid off. I moved into a tent in his father’s backyard the very next day.

This year, around 40 of us gathered in Maui with Ram Dass for a reunion. We’d all been through a lot in the four decades since we’d been with Maharajji. There was Ram Dass’s massive stroke years earlier, and the gratefulness that he was still with us, and able to speak far better than the doctors ever expected (with the added benefit of those long pauses that give us time to sink into the heart space). There were the deaths of satsang members to remind us to appreciate the blessings of this life. But no matter how much time has elapsed, no matter how many challenges we’ve faced—divorces, bankruptcies, physical issues, difficulties with family and friends and businesses—we were still all joined in this large family of the spirit, still telling and listening to the stories, the words, that have coated our life with Maharajji.

And no words can express the gratitude for such grace.

A video message…

It’s a cool night in Austin tonight, a marked difference from the scorch of summer, half a blink away. I have my windows open and face a room swept clean today. I swept all the rooms in the house and did some straightening. There’s space in here tonight.

Tomorrow the Guest arrives.

When Andrew left the last time, I lay on my couch and heard a Rumi poem, and I saw that he was like Shams to me. The Beloved of lore. It’s several months later now, and he’s en-route; his next flight is from Auckland to San Francisco. I envy him the travel. I envy touching down at SFO.

Today I bought some sausage that he likes and Reese’s Cups and new editions of some heavy metal magazines.  I felt happy to do it, and I have no idea what I’m doing. This is different from last time.

I’m not riding the oxcytocin wave of romance that brought us together last time, beautiful and righteous as it was. I’m simply here, curious.

I have no prediction of the next moment. I’m fascinated by this experience. I remember driving to the airport the last time he came to town, which was also the first time. (And the first time we’d seen each other in eighteen years.)

I felt nervous on the ride and knew that I just did not know what to expect. That kind of clarity can riddle a person with anxiety, or it can wake you up.

We really never do know what to expect. Yet somehow we’re mostly just dozingly cruising through our world. Leaving the house and driving to work. Eating. Showering. We act like each moment isn’t completely new.

We have no idea, ever, what’s going to happen. We’re sleepwalking through the movie.

My only job is to wake up.

My friend Erik recently married a woman from another country so I’d asked him for some suggestions on the process. This is what he wrote:

And as far as marriage goes, I’ll share with you the biggest lesson I’ve learned which is that: the ONLY purpose for it that works is to use it as a classroom for my own spiritual maturation… not the other person’s, mind you, but solely my own!  (It’s VERY tempting to spot the ego in the other and try to get THEM to mature spiritually, but just trust me… it NEVER works!)  Lol…

A good warning for me. I know that if I feel uncomfortable, I’m likely to seek fault in my mate, projected from my own sleepy, delusional mind.

In Be Here Now this week, Ram Dass writes:

I CAN DO NOTHING FOR YOU BUT WORK ON MYSELF . . .

Neither this man who’s flying across the world tonight nor I know what we’re in for. But we are open to the river of faith, and this is simply where we are. He was lovingly (and with impressive efficiency and focus) compelled to come here, and I am here to receive him. Life is like this for me: unpredictable, fast-changing, wondrous. When I watch the movie, I’m just curious, smiling in fascination.

It’s all very dreamy.

For more writing from Carin (aka Carina ShantiOm), please visit

www.nowstayopen.com

and

www.whatamidoingup.tumblr.com.