Ram Dass Now

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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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.

Lots of words in this one . . .but it’s 1/3 of how it started.

My life changed in the past few days as I watched a beautiful 7 year old little girl ride a scooter into surgery, excited about her hospital stay. She knew what was happening, and she stood up and faced it in a way that I don’t know that I would have–the lions still spook me a little. Those fierce lions bowed down to her. I bow to her and her mother. I cannot live my life the same after watching an exhausted little girl rise up from bed against her body’s wish to sleep, and walk around to promote healing. I am humbled by her Muchness (you have to see the newest Alice In Wonderland to get that reference).

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I went into this blogging experience completely blind. I hadn’t read a bunch of spiritual/philosophical/existential/quantum physics books in a while . . . I used to read them constantly. I haven’t been meditating for hours each day . . . but there was a period when I did. I’ve just been living my life as I live it, mistakes and successes and everything in between. When the request for writers came out, I replied with interest, but didn’t pour over my response to make sure I said things right or wrong. When I talked to the folks at Love Serve Remember, I didn’t get my copy of Be Here Now out and read it repeatedly to prepare the perfect responses. I actually laid in my bed half naked and just answered questions with what came naturally. It was really beautiful to be in that space–It’s not that I didn’t care, it’s just that I wasn’t basing the my sense of self on getting picked or not. I wasn’t evaluating myself as a teacher/guide based on this. Now don’t get me wrong–I did put effort into how I sounded.  But I didn’t try so hard to craft each sentence to perfection.

And then I found out that I was picked to participate. BAM!! Ego came rushing in to congratulate me . . . and I fell for it hook, line, and sinker.   How self-important is that!!?? It’s based in desire. A desire to help, but a desire all the same. All of a sudden, I DESIRED Ram Dass to know who I am–to remember me, acknowledge me. But at the same time, I didn’t really feel the need to send out repeated email/facebook/twitter/linkedIn blasts asking people to click ‘like’ on my posts. I didn’t approach each friend and proactively nudge them to check out my posts. I’ve taken a more Zen approach to it: Those who want, or are ready to see it, hear it, learn from it, will come to it through our conversations, and my neutral page posts (vs marketing blasts) on my pages. If not, I’ll still be teaching and helping people face to face, where we can share the same space for a while. I love the karma yoga that is my daily life. This experience has been icing on the cake that I stumbled into. Tapasia baked the cake. Continue reading

By far, these 7 pages are my absolute favorite in BHN culminating in my favorite page, #14. For some reason these hit home with me. Yesterday I read these pages with background music live on my weekly radio show, The Full Lotus Kirtan Show. If you’d like to listen go to fulllotuskirtan.com and figure out how to download it (I’m on vacation so it may be a while before I can upload it).

“YOU can never get to the destination in the process: You must die” (8)

You know, I spend so much of my time trying in vain manipulate and arrange what I am given in the present so that it will ‘create’ the best scenario in the future. I know I am not alone. Constantly saying, “This moment is not enough.” It’s like Zack was writing about Mondays… if I just grin and bear it through this THEN I’ll be happy. Ick…. it’s so constant. In a state of filling rather than fulfillment. And, ok. That’s just where I am.

But what I think is so interesting about this, is that in my imaginary and projected future, I am never the transformed being who sees and understands differently than I currently do. This is what truly happens. We have paradigm shifts. We grow into new ways of being. But our mind doesn’t/can’t imagine the new way of being. Its job is to keep us in a pattern of resistance and primal security. So even in the future that we want so badly, we’re as limited as we are now. A three year old imagines being an astronaut. He can’t imagine what type of thoughts he would have after all of that training. No, he imagines himself, maybe in an older body, hanging out in space.

I have been pretending my whole life that I will be the same person in the future and think the same way. I guess what I am saying is: I am a caterpillar who wants to become a flying caterpillar, not even thinking that I might be one day a butterfly. A caterpillar can’t even conceive of a butterfly. “Beyond the beyond.” Who we think we are, caterpillar, three year old, this body, human being, whatever… MUST DIE in every moment to really be here now. “It’s just your vantage point that you’re sort of… stuck in” (14).

Page 14 (above) is it for me. This is what I need to hear over and over. First, I’ll say that I have had many debates with friends about this idea of determinism. All I can say to all of them is that it’s not determinism in the way we’ve been taught about it—not fatalism. There is not some destiny out there waiting for us to achieve. The future does not exist. We’re on the edge of time and experience and time moves from present to past—not from past to future (and yes, even this is an illusion, but a more mature one nonetheless).

We’re determined beings to the extent that we are unfolding in a completely lawful and orderly way. It’s karma. I can look back through all the different minds of my life and see the same thread to all my successes, failures, epiphanies, depressions, cravings etc. Since I was a kid, the seed for awakening was there. I have been dancing the beautifully tragic dance and getting caught time and again. And then I see Blake remember, and he advances on to the next phase of his being. “If you could stand back far enough and watch the whole process…”

- bt -

Wilco’s “War on War” from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot became my song of the week. It pairs with these readings so well. … at least this line…

“You have to lose

You have to die

You have to learn how to die

If you want to want to be alive.”

So it’s all the same thing. It’s all made of the same energy. God is everything. . . including me, and you, and that table. I like the comment that we are all fingers on God’s hand.  I like it because it really seems to fit—we may be God’s pinky, but until the pinky ‘remembers’ that it’s a pinky, it’s just a pinky dressed in the projections of an ego; but when it remembers that it’s God, that pinky becomes God—it strips itself of the ego; rather, the ego is, well, absorbed into God, into everything-ness. Is-ness.

Unbearable compassion. Hridayam, heart cave. Sameness. For a long time, I tried to meditate and ‘pretend’ that I was directly connected to the things around me; this used my brain and did a wonderful job of entertaining my ego.  Then came Be Here Now and that heart cave. The whole idea of going into your heart to really experience same-ness shook me up a bit—I had been so proud of my intellectual understanding that I had forgotten that experiential knowing comes from the heart. . . and REALLY knowing that you are the same as everything MUST involve total, unbearable compassion because it not only involves direct knowing of beauty in ways that go way out there, but also the same one-ness with deep pain, sorrow, confusion; what a beautiful arrangement, that even knowing pain is a direct expression of the highest form of Love: Compassion. Compassion is beauty; it is one of the greatest transformations to witness.

So, while meditation has changed in its form, I am grateful for having gone through the more ego-based ‘thinking’ that was masquerading as meditation . . . for that was a part of my path; without it, I would not have realized the difference, or that it’s all part of the same thing. It’s still all the same thing, even if we ‘get it wrong,’ we still get it right. Compassion for yourself folks. If you are starting a path of meditation, and things seem to get noisy at first, it’s ok; have compassion for yourself because you’re just going through exactly what you’re supposed to go through.

I’ll wrap up my first post by sharing that I’ve been at the beach for the past several days, with beautiful people. I’ve learned so much from the beach, from watching children catch minnows, then set them free because they are God’s children, too. Children get total, unbearable compassion.

Namaste’
Jonathan F. Anderson

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