Ram Dass Now

She fell into the deep space between the words and was met by the unopened hand of fate.

At times I have let go into the what-is-ness, the OM, the void …free falling, unfettered into now. Going nowhere and everywhere all at once.

Moments that moved form the “form into the formless ”  pg 93

Once when I was about 17-years-old I was riding on a bus. I’d been meditating lots and feeling really free. I was at the back of the bus enjoying the ride one moment and then… there was no time and I was feeling incredible, heart-bursting love for all of the faces around me. And  then… there was no me looking at that but just the LOVE. I was it and it was me…all of it.

Another time…standing outside the Dakota building on Central Park West just days after John Lennon died. Thousands of voices sung through the tears … “all we are saying, is give peace a chance”. My heart was broken open both by the deep grief I was feeling and the tsunami of love in the aftermath of the earth quaking news of his death. I felt all of us as one heart singing out from the same soul place.

Krishna Das chanting me into beyond the beyond with Hey Ma Durga or Bhagavan Das taking me to the edge and back with deep, rhythmic, trance-y , incantational Jai Kali Ma

All of it a journey to my heart.

Why this matters is because it opens my heart to a deep compassion for all of us and helps inform the way I live my life.

In all of these moments “something gets so esencey you feel you are touching God”. (Pg 92).And in that space there is nothing to do. It just IS. And we all are it.

Moving from Form to Formless…from Being Here Now to Being Love Now.

For me, the pure ideas…the essency part of what is manifest was the bridge. Those essency parts were accessed by going fully into and beyond the form. Complete presence. I only get there by surrendering to Grace…by getting out of my own way.

It’s like going in through the out door.

Sometimes it happens through joy…sometimes through pain.

Moment

IT HAS HAPPENED NOW.

NO MORE WONDERING ABOUT THE WHEN OR HOW OF SUCH MOMENTS.

ANOTHER STEP TOWARD LIFE’S FULL EXPRESION OF KARMIC MAYHEM.

NEVER WOULD I HAVE IMAGINED THE MAGNITUDE OF THE FORCE OF SUCH AN INVISIBLE WIND THAT WOULD BLOW FROM FATE’S OVALLED MOUTH

TO SEND ME SOARING..FEET LONG SINCE FORGETTING THE PRESS OF EARTH

LIFTED…I THOUGHT…AND CARRIED AS IF ON A WAVE OF WORDS AND DOINGS…LIFE AND DEATH…SO POWERFUL AS TO TSUNAMI THE ME OF NOW INTO OBLIVION

HOPING FOR THAT I SUPPOSE

AN ANNIHILATION OF THIS CURRENT CONFIGURATION OF ME

INSTEAD…HERE REMAINS ALL OF MY ME-NESS

NOW BATTERED, NAKED, DRIPPING WET AND SHIVERING AS THE WAVE RETREATS

ME- STANDING STRONGER SOMEHOW FOR HAVING BEEN TAKEN ON THAT RIDE

There and back again.  It is all grace.

This magical mystery tour of the life we all live keeps me in a constant state of wonder and awe. I’ve been thinking about the fragility of my human body and mind and the eternal nature of my soul and how moving into my heart  seems to bring it all together.

It is as if the heart bridges the gap between the temporal and the eternal…not only bridges the gap…it is it all.

Om Kali Om Kali Om Kali Om

I am sitting amidst the chaos of a house half-packed chanting with Bhagavan Das from his “Now” CD…

“Jai Kali Ma, Jai Kali Ma, take from me all that is not free…”

Anytime I’ve felt the need to accelerate the burn, dive in for the ‘crisp trip’…when the veils part enough and I see the show isn’t the whole story it is then I call out to Kali to bring it on.

This usually happens when disillusionment is brought on by the implosion of some expectation of how my life ‘should’ be happening.

She brings grace in the form of chaos. Sometimes I need that fierce grace.

The Mahanirvana Tantra says: “Just as all colors disappear in black, so all names and forms disappear in her.”

The energy that seduces and induces desires and then swallows them completely.

She is it all.

I love the magic and have have grown to respect the madness for all of the energy it carries.

Letting that shakti burn away  defenses and pretenses leaves me raw and vulnerable and open to receive.

She brings grace in the form of chaos and then is there to pick up the pieces.

The LOVE…ever present “Beyond the Beyond” it awaits.

Resting in that love feels good.

“The feel is real” as Bhagavan Das says.

Jai Ma Durga!

Chanting Hey Ma Durga in a room full of people with Krishna Das brings  me to tears every time because I feel us all…like one collective primal soul singing out to the universe from a place of tenderness and pain about the almost unbearable beauty of all that is.

I’m posting the following from the liner notes of his CD Breath of Heart because I think it is so beautiful and speaks to the message. (I hope this is ok with KD.)

Surround me with your loving arms…hold me in your heart.

Let me know that I am loved

and that I can love.

Show me that no matter where I go

That I come and go in You.

I am never out of your loving presence.

That you are the smile behind the smile,

the touch behind the touch

The kiss behind the kiss…

You are the constant presence that I forget until I remember

and when I remember my Self, I remember You.

I sing your Name. What else can I think of? You ARE Love.

And I AM You.

Thank you Krishna Das and Bhagavan Das for singing my heart open.

Love everything. Resist nothing. Stay open to feeling what is in every moment. The rest will take care of itself.

That is the message pages 22-28 brought to me.

Just stop trying to push away or  get out of now and instead move into it all more and feel every wave of that “sea of emotion” that Zach mentioned in his post…and not just feel every wave, but be in the waves without fighting the flow…and  even relax into the experience…enjoy the ride….be carried.

I can choose to be with the mystery of it all and admit there is no control of anything other than how I am choosing to be …open or closed…accepting or rejecting…embracing or pushing away.

If I can’t accept and be in what’ is’ in the moment then I have to “turn off all the vibrations of the scene” (pg 25). In that shut down, unfeeling place I am cut off from life. Choosing to love what is puts me in an expansive, receptive place… a place of faith and devotion.

I sit with my unease…my despair..my fear …my struggle of will…my battle with reality. I sit and notice …close to being swept away once again into the illusion of delusion.

“Love” ram Dass said. “Love, Love Love it all.”

As I breath into my heart I want to escape the feeling…feeling too much is frightening…overwhelming…almost painful..and beautiful.

I want to escape the feeling and yet it’s like a pain with imminent results…perhaps something is being birthed.

Choosing to love. Being love.

The truth is an energetic expression and that energy flows in when the channels are open.

When my heart is open to that flow of energy/love, it rushes in. It is always there. Like the sun.

Looking at my kids, watching the sunrise, returning to my yoga mat, sitting on my cushion, chanting with Krishna Das or Bhagavan Das or all of the other amazing conduits of that energy who make themselves available, reading this book…so many ways to get here.

So simple. So beautiful. “Bhaja Govindam” turn the mind toward God.

And the magic is that when I tap into that eternal source of  well being, I also become a conduit and the vibrations I send out resonate with others who shine it back to me.  Love is self perpetuating.

I’m thinking tonight about what it was and when it happened. The event in my life that forbid my “premature closing of accounts with reality” (p 17).

I don’t remember a time when I didn’t have a sense that there was another layer of existence that I could feel but not see…sense but not know.

As a young child kneeling beside my bed every night I would pray….”Now I lay me down to sleep…..if I should live for other days, I pray thee Lord to guide my way.”  A taste of sweet surrender.

That ritual of devotion and surrender would shift my consciousness into a receptive state and spirit would flow in as I moved out of my head and into my heart. In that heart space I’d crawl into bed and float from my normal waking consciousness into another way of being. I have distinct memories of feeling the release from my body and a deep peace…and also that I was in the presence of complete love. I don’t know how else to describe it. It felt like where I belonged . Where I belong. Home.

Those early moments of grace and other similar heart-expansive, fulfilled moments touched that place of “intuitive validity” (pg.16 )and set me on a path to seeking ways to be in that space again and again. I was drawn to people who created experiences  through music or words that brought me there. They were like sherpas with radiant smiles…ready and willing to help guide the way with reverence and joy. And so there’d be more experiences of being in the bhav…so good….but fleeting.

In the writings of saints and realized beings I would find validity and affirmation of the experiences. Those writings would help me feel less crazy. But I still felt I was missing something.

I was looking outside of myself .  The paradox was that I  was trying to get somewhere but there was/is nowhere to go– I just need to be here now. And there’s nothing to figure out.

I’m not sure why getting high with psychedelics never looked like a method of exploring for me. Many of the people I’ve looked to along the way and have resonated with strongly started there. But for me it has been meditation,yoga,chant and love  that have been peeling back the layers. And there’s been a strange magic in the opening to other realities that those layers reveal. When I let go of my agenda, trust the flow of grace and  keep my heart open, the way opens up. It is right there inside of me.

Chanting in a room full of people with Krishna Das or surrendering into a posture alone on my yoga mat , I can feel that same sense of being where I belong that I felt as a child. Moving out of my head and into my heart.

I am so in awe of this life I’m living and blown away by the support of beings near and far. And still…I feel crazy, but happy.

Jai Neem Karoli Baba!