Ram Dass Now

Pg 17. So many layers of reality/consciousness that we cannot possibly know with our minds, but we intuit it, we “infer the presence of something else” (pg 18).  All the levels, known, unknown, unknowable, are all out there, all in here. Except trying to grasp at them doesn’t seem to work. As a matter of fact, I have learned that the more I try to read and reason the existence of spirit, the less likely I am to believe it! Why? Because I’m trying to apply dynamics/rules from one level of consciousness to a completely different one (among other reasons in all levels–more on that later). There are just so many ways to experience being-ness–even just at this level of waking consciousness! Not to mention the other layers William James writes about. We get to just be HERE now! But we know those other places are there too, but for this, we stay here.

We all are tuned in to some of these other ‘realities’ around us. It’s different for each of us.  We may experience them as intuition (intangible knowledge), or as natural talent (often behaviorally expressed). We just know there are pockets of ‘understanding’ that we cannot quite explain. So we don’t have to (explain, that is). And we may even recognize some healthy things to do that encourage these periods of ‘getting it’: Yoga, Taiji, meditation, music, prayer, exercise, Qigong, Pilates, reading good books . . . the more you do them, the more you seem to have the ‘times of understanding’ last longer. You’re actually just paying better attention.

Sometimes though, we get back here to the more simple things, like just letting the sight of a child help you experience God in your soul,  your gut, in your bones (Pg 16, “it’s got intuitive validity”), with no intellectual explanation needed. You know the feeling I’m talking about. . . when you’re busy being all grumpy, and you inexplicably allow yourself to melt into mirth at the site of child barking, pretending to be a puppy; no longer worrying about that project you’ve got to turn in, no longer ‘worried’ about ‘losing your center.’ Besides, what’s so special about the center anyway? At this point, I’m not so certain there is a center, except when we draw boundaries (and most of us do), then ‘center’ is a useful practice. Do you draw boundaries around surrender? (Pg 20)

Please remember that page numbers refer to the Brown Pages, From Bindu to Ojas, in Be Here Now. Be Love Now soon to come!

Namaste’
Jon

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It’s already been decided, so can I just let it be? I’m so sleepy. And then I wonder, is my post too sparse? Have I put enough of myself in it? But the message this week is simple and profound and deep in itself. It’s all determined. Including me punching these keys and these marks showing up on the screen. That’s what we’re discussing. The inevitability of everything that’s happening now.

I wrote the following on my column last winter:

I believe that everything is as is, as I recently heard Deepak Chopra say. That is-ness is infinite and now. Everything that has ever happened, everything that ever will happen, everything that’s happening now: it’s all this instant. I have a gesture I make when I’m describing this. My words seem lacking.

I snap the fingers of my right hand, while moving my arm in a dropping motion, with the snap landing as the hand drops into this moment. There is nothing else.

And there is no other way this moment could be. Is that fate? I think it might be. Sometimes I call it karma. I may be contrasting other definitions of the word. I say it as in meant to be. And tell me, how can anything not be?

And so, I’ll stumble right into dropping off my post for this week, twirling the Grateful Dead experience into the folds of these brown pages. Ladies and gentlemen, pages 8 – 14:

*****

I’m getting a whole new layer of the Grateful Dead, and it’s absolutely related to this experience. The layers of the onion – the sweet, sweet onion – are falling away. Unfolding. Lotus petals opening.

It was my time with the Dead that instrumentally and initially shifted my conscious and turned me on to other ways of knowing.

I suspect my dad feels his once dutiful daughter broke up with him for Ram Dass and Jerry Garcia and has been errant ever since, but I couldn’t help it. This life calls from the heart.

It’s as if you’re propelled into it

Like the moth into the flame.

Ram Dass, Be Here Now, page 11

It couldn’t be any other way. Nothing could be. And I’m grateful because there’s no other life that I can imagine but that of waking up, relaxing and resting in the Beloved’s arms.

It’s inevitable,

It’s just happening,

It’s GOT to happen that way.

page 12

These are some of the most relaxing words I know:

YOU ARE A TOTALLY DETERMINED BEING

page 14

On the inside of my car’s windshield are the words “It’s already been decided” written in dry erase marker, baked on now from this Texas heat. When my eyes fall on them, I  settle. My friend said to me, “Isn’t it great to know that we can’t fuck up?” We are loved no matter what. It dissolves worry.

These words snap me awake – radical to the mind, reflecting the soul – as do these words on page four of Be Here Now:

There is writing happening . . .

I am writing, but “I” am not writing.

These fingers touch these keys, but who’s typing? Who is hearing this music? Who is reading this page? As a writer I trip out on this all the time, especially with pen in hand, watching the letters unfold on the page like a dance they’ve always known.

We forget and think we have to drive and drive hard. Beyond that, beyond beyond beyond, is the memory that has us on this journey, smiling from the inside.

Believe it if you need it

if you don’t, just pass it on.

Sun and shower

wind and rain

in and out your window

like a moth before a flame.

~ Robert Hunter, Box of Rain

Thank you for journeying with us. We welcome your reflections.

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

The last paragraph of the “transformation” portion of Be Here Now says “Now, though I am a beginner on the path, I have returned to the West for a time to work out karma or unfulfilled commitment….Each of us finds his unique vehicle for sharing with others his bit of wisdom.”

My thoughts exactly.

The importance of “Be Here Now” can be told by many. It can and has been told many many times. Without question it is one of the true iconic manifestos from the 1960’s. Above all, however, it is a manual for being that is just as relevant today as it was in 1970. It is a guide for students and teachers alike.

As a student on the path, I would like to share my own experiences and how this grace of “knowing” has illuminated a path from my mind to heart and from my heart outwards.

While I’m still finding my vehicle for sharing my wisdom with others, I am profoundly awakened in this moment. It’s a beautiful and auspicious day to be sharing with this tribe. 15 years ago today the great American musical yogi Jerry Garcia left his body. Without going off on too much of a tangent, I am so beautifully reminded that he shared his gift of song and sorcery with us on such a moment by moment basis. Sometimes, it was other worldly and sometimes it was inextricably human – nonetheless, Jerry was a great teacher for nurturing ones god given gift.

As I fully awaken right now, my “heart cave” is open and full of the oneness of cosmic energy. The trick it seems is to string a bunch of these moments together to form a day to day conscious approach to life on this planet. Dancing through our lila and not separating it from the divine that it is here and now. It’s too easy to just have a good random moment here and there and not make the connection. I get so caught up in the drama of my life – the being of my ego personality or the being that is required to perform a certain role. The heart cave turns into a mind cave so fast that I often end up being nowhere near now. I call it “suffering in advance.”

I love to panic about what’s gonna happen later – what’s gonna happen when I take that call at 1100 am, or when I have to balance the budget for the month, or when I have to confront the person I don’t get along with? It’s all gonna go really badly, right? I’m going to get angry and freaked out. I suffer in advance. The trip of being alive and human takes on many windy roads all of which are accompanied by our stuff unless we…

“Start again. Become that trusting open surrendered being” (Page 1 from “The Core Book”)

When has God ever let me down? When has the universe and it’s energy ever done me wrong? Never if I choose to look at it all as it exactly is, separating my ego the bigger unfolding.

So, as we get into the first pages of “The Core Book” and leave the “Transformation” it’s hard to not be attached to method. The methods outlined here are groovy and I love being on that trip. It works for me. I am becoming a pretty good student of many forms of Yoga, starting to sing the sweet names of the beloved and have a mala around my neck all the time. It’s far out and a lot of fun!

But the attachment to those methods is also just attachment. Many great teachers of late have pointed out that the true awakening is when you are free from the method itself and are bonded with the places they take you.

Page 2 clearly says “consciousness = energy = love = awareness = light = wisdom = beauty = truth = purity. It’s all the same trip.”

Maharaji-ji was the pure embodiment of light and energy. There was no separation and there were no boundaries. He was finely tuned. As I venture out on this weeks course in the college of life, I’d do best to remember that.

With that, until my next post. For now, I look forward to reading what my cyber soul brothers and sisters write!