Ram Dass Now

If nothing is going on, nothing is happening, nothing has ever happened, and nothing ever will happen, then there is nothing for me to know. I have no clue. No idea what’s going on. So why am I writing on this blog? So many others who are so much riper than me. This is my karma, I suppose.

I experience my experiences, but engage in my own illusions, indulge myself in it, project my own ideas onto the void, and call it “Jon.” How’s that? What projector? What illusion creator? Bzzzt. That’s the short circuit.

I am a walking paradox. I carry with me a great deal of burden because I still need to learn or ripen. I am so grateful that I do feel deep compassion, that it keeps me sane (most of the time).  We found feral kittens recently, and I knew that we’d need to catch them and help adopt them out so they could live healthy, happy lives with loving people–and one night I caught one, and as I took it to a waiting carrying case, it slipped from my grasp and ran back to it’s mother. I was already feeling terrible for taking a kitten from its mother before I had my hands on him. Apparently, I cannot knowingly separate a child from its mother, in spite of knowing that a growing feral community is not healthy for the kittens, or future kittens. But it’s not my place to decide kitty karma. My compassion overtook my intellectual mind and helped my unconscious knowing to come through. At the same time, I am glad that there was another person that was able to catch all 4 kittens, get them to a clinic, and get their shots and find a home for them. But I could not do it. I’ll kill a mosquito, and feel remorse as I wash the blood from my hands, but I won’t take a kitten from it’s mother to help find it a loving people home. I have no clue what’s going on with that, but I know it’s not a weakness of any sort. I don’t know whether to feel guilty or great, or nothing at all. This is all very confusing–fortunately, I see confusion as a reminder to slow down and pay attention. Continue reading

I just Googled “multiples of 7″ to figure out what pages we’re on. In case you’re wondering, it’s 91 – 97. But who’s counting? It seems like we’re so deeply into this project that everything is relevant. But let me read a little bit here, and I’ll get back to you.

Again,

p. 91 going back, back, back . . . until you are the idea that lies behind the universe you are literally it you’re not making believe you’re it YOU ARE IT.

But yet the mind, the tool we’ve been/I’ve been most trained with in this life so far, can’t push beyond the skull, is trapped inside the limits of the ego.

It’s okay.

See, that’s the thing. The slice of me that’s turning these brown pages, looking loosely at words: duality . . . realized . . . ocean . . .

the part that tries to understand and tries to knock out through some barrier or another . . .

it’s all one and infinite and

the knowing is way beyond anything thoughts or the mind can understand or words can understand or really even point to. See, and that’s okay. I am/you are/we are it already and infinite and unknowable. It’s relieving.

Like Zach, in this moment I don’t feel like putting words to it.

Let me read some more.

p. 93 you go from form into formless

see,

I don’t even have to understand. In fact, I can’t understand.

Hilarious, the knocking from the inside.

p. 94 what has submitted to fate becomes part of the always so

Stop fighting. Just stop fighting. Just drop it and be here on the couch, back softly sunk into the hand-me-down leather, tongue in my mouth, poking between my teeth, chill fan breeze on the backs of my hands. No thoughts.

No thoughts.

The always so is completely silent and infinite – beyond thought. Submitting is ultimate liberation. These things are paradoxical. And we’re trained to fight and complain and push push push. Somewhere in A Course in Miracles it says that something in us thinks that by pitching a fit (pouring out heavy emotions) we can change the always so

the already so.

And I have seen a Bodhisattva Continue reading

“It is only when you rest quietly in your own Hridayam . . .”

(Ram Dass, Be Here Now, page 5)

My Hridayam: what you get to peek at when Hanuman tears open his chest. I love how it’s dripping with blood. It’s not a clean, simple cut. It’s ragged. And as I’m typing this I hear Deepak Chopra say, “I will see myself as the Seer in the ever-changing field.”

The Seer watches from Hridayam.

When I took up the book to read last night, I was deep in a fog of mind and emotion. No clarity. Peace unfamiliar. And I just felt complicated by the early part of the brown pages. There was some faint specter of that trusting open surrendered being, but it was just out of my grasp, like a memory you can’t quite put together and you’re not entirely sure you actually experienced.

The next few pages are filled with ink: swirling dense pictures, repeated images and almost hidden language, and my mind said, “You don’t understand this.” Basically saying, “You suck.” I was nowhere near feeling UNBEARABLE COMPASSION though I desperately longed for it. Reading the word Hridayam – the root of my first mantra (that I picked up from Ram Dass in Journey of Awakening, and that I saw printed on a license plate in the parking garage of Whole Foods the other day) – was a tiny puff of space in my thought-laden mind.

But as I turned the pages, that mind-noise was trying really hard to figure out what all of this writing was about. Thinking, and working really hard, pushing itself, as if that would help make sense of the language and the concepts. And then,

page 7.

And then my whole system went, “Oh yeah,” exhaled, and relaxed. Space pours from this page, and ahhhh.

We’re heady people, man. I love how Zach said he loves to panic about what’s going to happen the next morning. I – or my mind – loves to try to logic my way out of my muck. In such moments, when the gentle peace of being right now is slopped over with wet mud and rejection, I am so convinced that this moment is a problem. I try to figure it out.

I scrap and grab for this teaching or the other, some training, something some great baba said, something to make the shift.

On some level, and at some point, I suppose I realize that thinking my way into an open heart just ain’t gonna happen and I eventually can see again. And there’s always that sweet joy of relief.  Remembering: I know, and I know that I know.

The butterfly – its own creation –

Here’s more from the Ram Tirtha quote at the bottom of page 7 along with my great thanks.

I have no scruple of change, nor fear of death,
Nor was I ever born,
Nor had I parents.
I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute,
I am That, I am That,

I cause no misery, nor am I miserable;
I have no enemy, nor am I enemy.
I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute,
I am That, I am That,

I am without form, without limit,
Beyond space, beyond time,
I am in everything, everything is in me.
I am the bliss of the universe,
Everywhere am I.
I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute,
I am That, I am That,

I am without body or change of the body,
I am neither senses, nor object of the senses,
I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute,
I am That, I am That,

I am neither sin, nor virtue,
Nor temple, nor worship
Nor pilgrimage, nor books.
I am Existence Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute,
I am That, I am That.

See you next week, my friends. We’ll be here every day.

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

Namaste’! I am very happy and deeply humbled to be contributing in any form to this blog. Be Here Now has continued to be a life changing book for me in ways that are difficult to put into words; but I will try my best, and I sincerely hope that I am able to share my gratitude, and lessons learned from Ram Dass with each of you. My eternal gratitude and devotion to Mahara-ji, Ram Dass, everybody at the Love, Serve, Remember Foundation, and HarperCollins/HarperOne publishing.

A little bit about who I am: I consider myself to be a kind, spiritual person who’s been lucky enough to meet some wonderful teachers. I serve people through my mental health private practice and counseling clinic (www.gatehealing.com). I have learned service from teachers like Ram Dass, and try to serve people regardless of their reason for reaching out (often because pain has come, or because they simply feel that there is a deeper sense of contentment that they are longing for). I consider it a deep honor for these people to invite me into these intensely personal parts of their lives.

To continue my own study, I practice meditation, Taiji and Qigong in everyday life. I have found that reaching for the refrigerator door can be a Taiji movement, and that just listening to the squeaky wheels on a shopping cart at the grocery store to be a single pointed meditation. I believe that there is so much left to do, and Ram Dass’ “Still Here” book really drove that lesson home for me. I am amazed at his humility and constant love, even in the face of such ‘fierce grace’ as his stroke.

Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bhodisvaha Ommmm. This was the first mantra from Be Here Now that struck a chord with me. It’s reference to moving beyond the great beyond was a part of naming my practice The Gate.

I hope that every person that reads the blog, and any of Ram Dass’ books is able to find the comfort and contentment that is accessible to all of us.

Warmly,
Jon

Web Site: www.gatehealing.com
Blog Site: www.gatehealing.com/blog
Twitter: www.twitter.com/gatehealing
Facebook: www.facebook.com/gatehealing