Ram Dass Now

I have been finding feathers recently. Serendipitously. It’s usually just a flash from the corner of my eye. Like intuition. Something says “Look this way” or my dog pulls strangely off the trail and stops, then I see it. It is very exciting. I have never found feathers before. I take a daily walk in the woods. First I found my totem animal’s (crow) feather, then a red-tailed hawk’s (which my dog ate), an owl’s, and a small bird’s. Each one has synced up with events or moments in my recent life where the feather seems to be an obvious omen or token of guidance.

Now each day when I walk with my sweetdog, I am noticing that I am scanning the ground for feathers. Because I want to collect them, and I want so earnestly to feel guided. I have never found a feather this way, and I know I just have to trust and not expect anything and then they appear when they need to appear. It’s so romantic(!) and significant(!!!) to find feathers all the time. So it’s almost automatic that my eyes just scrutinize the forest floor for the form of a feather. It’s exhausting for my eyes because there are thousands of repeating forms and I am looking for just a few.

So every day, I scuffle through the fall leaves and pine straw, I remind myself “Don’t look for feathers”, which just makes me think about feathers. “Don’t think of a pink elephant”. It keeps me a thought away from that bright intuition, which is easy and effortless. I am attached to looking and finding. Making something happen, when I know it just happens. It’s all unfolding. Trust. Trust. Trust.

Before it was feathers, it was “a guru, any guru”. Who is my guru? Where can I go to find him/her? Is it her? Can’t be him. Constantly looking and searching and shuffling through forms in exasperation–desperation. It didn’t matter how many times I read that “the guru is within” or “God=Guru=Self”. It’s always: “Yeh but….”.

When I am quiet, that voice that speaks to me inside and says “look over there…. ahh a feather”…. that’s the guru. My intuition, is the voice of the guru–the voice of God. They are the same. And that voice is not Indian. That voice is not a little man in a blanket or a woman who gives hugs. In fact the form of Maharaj-ji and Amma are not it at all. It’s that spirit that is moving around inside of them. And I think my work is not finding them, not putting up pictures of them and talking to them (which are useful reminders), but trying to identify with my intuition. Identifying with that part within me that is just like what is within them. That part of us which is in the flow without resistence.

Love to hear your thoughts. That feels right to me at the moment so I goes wif it.

- bt

fulllotuskirtan.com

I want my writing to make more sense than it seems to make. But that’s how this trip is: it doesn’t make any sense.

And yet, we know it to be true. On page 16, Ram Dass says, “It’s intuitively valid. Inside you know it’s right.” And so must everything be that shows up on this page tonight. I’ve written this post more times over the last few days than I care to recall. Attempting to plan. Ha!

So as I hear this beautiful song that comes on my Pandora (Devi 2000 singing “Camp Ma Rama”), let’s let this flow . . .

[I wrote these notes on some post-its today while at work at the psych hospital.]

We’re all hallucinating all the time.

****

The point is not to feel better; it is to feel. The depth of this moment is all there is and our folly is to attempt to escape this. We will never be away from the now. [This is how we must die. To every sensation but this moment. To past, to future, to thoughts that think past and future exist at all.]

Scary? Go ahead and be scared. There’s the paradox — having the courage to be scared. I mean, what did I expect, taking on a process such as this? And these processes . . . am I willing to look into that mirror? Whose face will I see back?

****

“Turn around and look at yourself. ” That’s the order we’re being given. “And see who you truly are.” It’s what we’re asking for. By picking up this book and this project, boy are we asking for it.

And I see Ram Dass’s face in the hand-held mirror, and Zach asks, “Who are you now?” and there we are.

****

I’ve written well over a thousand words for this post and have erased all but about 300 at this point. When I get into the pages and into myself, there’s not that much to say.

Once those veils are pulled away, in this human’s experience, there is emptiness and stillness and total aliveness and it can be very, very quiet.

And it can sound like Jerry Garcia’s guitar.

I have faith and I feel it from inside. There’s nothing rational about it.

I watch the circumstances of my life that sometimes look really fucked.

But even to write that I know that what I’ve just written doesn’t make any sense either. How can what is be fucked? How can anything ever be wrong? Now is now. It just is.

See, I’m really grateful for that intuitive knowing that I have, the knowing, that is so far beyond language that I praise the writers and teachers who have been able to express these pointers:  Ram Dass, Rumi, Eckhart Tolle . . .

Without having their guidance, I might think I was even crazier than I already do. I know some other people think I am. I’m pretty sure we all are. Maybe the people in the psych hospital just don’t have a context for what they’re experiencing.

I can’t describe it because it is infinite and uncontainable. It is absolutely everything and it is all right now and it feels really nice and calm and peaceful and I’ll tell you what, boy howdy, sometimes it’s all I have to fall back on. And it never let’s me down.

To know this is faith. To understand that we are always kept in the arms of the Divine Mother. May we go deeply enough during the wild times that we continue to know this truth. Yes, it’s easy to sense the truth when I’m turning on in one of these specific ways (falling in love, yoga, being around a realized being), but what about when everything seems fucked?

Yep. That’s it. Exactly. Right there. Right here.

Peace, y’all.

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