Ram Dass Now

There is a perfection to the web of life that we can’t always see. The forest for the trees? Yes, I think it’s something like that.

Last spring I was asking for a natural way to share my column. My boyfriend was here on his first visit from New Zealand and I had been away from email for a while. One day I sat down to go through some of them and I saw a message from my sweet sister-friend Deneise Newman, a forwarded call for writers from Stephanie Reiter at Love Serve Remember Foundation.

Stephanie’s invitation to talk further came just as Andrew was getting ready to leave, and I told Stephanie so when I replied. The warmth in her response back to me made me realize, “I have a shot at this.” Connection.

I loved answering the questions she asked, name dropping Vrindaban, acknowledging the Dead shows as being as influential as any blue, oddly square-shaped book.

This blog brought me back home again in an unexpected way. That is, I wasn’t focused on Ram Dass or even NKB satsang. Ah, see, there are not limitations to the guru, to the love RD is writing about in Be Love Now. Now I’m smiling as Durga Das comes on my Pandora. I had recently been at a kirtan with him and Mira recently. Yes, we are everywhere.

Nevertheless, finding myself expanded as a writer — and nothing could have been a more perfect launching pad — simply by doing nothing: by staying home and getting to know my beau after 18 years beyond those beaches in sunny Greece . . . it’s quite amazing how we grew into each other over these years and seas, but that’s another story.

See? We don’t see the whole web. It seems as if there are other stories. But it’s all one.

I got my natural way to share my column. That’s one major boon.

I got to read every page of Be Here Now, those mysterious pages, looking through the images to see Sita moving aside. Surfing with Shiva while I read Jed McKenna’s books and my whole world fell apart. Writing with these pages gave me a generous place to sink into, process and create about the changes: Hail the vampire!

Hail the Now.

Hare Hare Mahadeva Shambo chants through my Pandora soundtrack. Kashi Vishwanata Gange.

See, I sat on the banks of the Ganges and Continue reading

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.

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.