Ram Dass Now

How simple is that? It IS in YOUR head! Ok, it’s in mine, too. That life stuff (. . . savings accounts, job, responsibility, etc) is all there for you to engage with (using your brain) however you choose to. Use what’s in your head in a helpful way, and you get the Ahhhhh!! way. Use your head in an unhealthy way and you get the Uunnnkkkk… way. Either one works something out for you. The agitation of the uuunnkkk motivates movement towards relief of ahhh (whether or not one chooses the relief path is up to them). The joy of the ahhhhh encourages you to do whatever led to the ahhhhh again. Are there contradictions to this? You bet. But that’s another page about polarities.

So how do you get into an ‘ahhh’ space? Feel free to share your unique practice in the comments section! Sometimes the connection seems so easy with meditation. Sometimes it takes some serious acknowledging and refocusing, along with the meditation. If you’re in that hard way, try to remember to get back in the now. . .THAT’s the changing your head. What is your body feeling now? What is your breath doing now? Just get now, with acceptance of it as-is.

From uuunnk to aaahhhh is what happens when you DO ‘throw it off’ . . . when you do truly accept the now in all of it’s forms—you throw off your expectations, attachments, ego. If you’re surfing it, you’re still aware of the ‘waves’ of life, you just relate with them differently than an uuunnkkkk’er.

Changing your head is a nice place to go. When God-mind visits, it seems like such a natural shift (from unnnk struggle to aaahhhh joy. . . from desire to non-attachment). When we’re actively engaging our egos, it seems much more challenging, though not impossible if the ego/attachment is brought into mindfulness as learning.

Open the mind to learn, let go of desire, surf life’s circumstances.

Namaste’

Jon

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I’ve been trying so hard to write in a way that is meaningful to everybody else; and I do mean everybody—I’ve been working hard to find the words that will connect as efficiently as possible to as many people as possible, and still manage to get something of value communicated. But nothing comes close to flashes I have randomly during the day/night when I’m not ‘trying’ to write. And that seems to happen when I don’t have some sort of writing device around. Hmm…

Right now, I judge, I evaluate, and I interpret. And that’s a lot of work to keep up with—it makes for a lot of words. Why? Because I still have desire. I still have ‘that unfulfilled thing’ (pg 22).  I see it, and I accept it to whatever degree I am able to in each moment. On this trip, anything can be useful, even the mind. That’s why it’s mindFULness, not mindLESSness.  Actually, to Be Here Now, your brain is sort of necessary for this part of the ride—may as well take care of it so that it can be a beautiful expression of God in your skull. And use it to simplify.

To be here now, you don’t have to become a monk. You don’t have to chase enlightenment. You don’t have to plan the perfect meditation retreat. You don’t have to teach the perfect Taiji class. You don’t have to be the perfect counselor. You don’t have to be the most articulate, authentic, or charismatic. You don’t have to be dramatic, magical, captivating, impressive, or anything else. You’re just you already, and that’s perfection (and my compassion is with each of you that don’t feel this as perfection—you are not alone! Heck, I’m hanging out right beside you from time to time) You’re just “ing-ing.” It’s just that simple. Right now, I get that.

This is from my blog, but the simplicity of doing what your’re doing fits:

“Ing-ing.” There’s a fun new word to play with. Consider this: we are always ‘doing’ something, experiencING things, lovING things, engagING things, you get the idea, we ‘ING’ everything by way of perception (that would be perceivING). It’s the “ing-ness” that is experience itself; transient and slippery, yet so obvious that you can’t miss an ing. You can trip over it, but you can’t miss it. My grammar teacher would be proud that I remember the word “Gerund.” A gerund is the active form of a verb—that is, the verb BECOMING a noun . . .when you are loving, you are experiencing something  called ‘love’ (a noun being ‘something’ or ‘love’) . . what are you experiencing? “It” – and “it” is clearly a noun . . .unless it’s a verb, then it’s a gerund verb, which is a verb sort of masquerading as a noun. When you are running, you are be’ing’ run; when you are loving you are being Love itself. Ing-ing: Is-ness is what Ram Dass calls it. Tao is what Lao Tzu calls it. A non-horse is what Chuang Tzu calls it. Ommmmmmm is what the universe calls it.

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I woke up this morning and felt, “You know what? I just don’t have any f***ing idea about a HEART CAVE. This heart cave thing is just spiritual BS. [Right off the bat...I know...eek!] Wait Wait Wait, there’s got to be a hridayam, a spiritual heart. Well, I don’t feel it right now! I want to write about it in my first blog post. Should I make something up and sound super-spiritual? Nah that wouldn’t be authentic! And boy…. you want to be authentic. You’ll step all over yourself and even fake it to be authentic. Wait… you’ve got to feel it Blake. Heart Cave Heart Cave Heart Cave…. h-e-a-r-t-c-a-v-e…” And then I remembered something.

{OK, I’m putting it out there… I have memory problems (ie. more grist for the mill).}

I have felt this heart cave before. I just wasnt feeling it right now. Isn’t it strange how, in any given moment, we shift into almost completely different version of who we think we are? This whole morning I was a 25 year old guy that couldn’t make any sense or connection out of the first page of a book I was supposed to blog about for 108 days. Just two weeks ago, I was not only a 25 year old guy who felt deeply about a heart cave, but I was also leading a heart cave guided visualization during savasana in my hatha yoga classes. It went something like the following:

“The whole ribcage from back to front is soft and more pliable. And the sternum over the heart center is so soft, it’s less like cartilage and maybe more like a waterfall. And this waterfall is one that you can reach your hand through and even step through to reveal the secret and silent cave of your heart. You can see the water gushing and falling outside and see the light dancing through, yet this damp and cool inner chamber is silent and serene.”

Something like that. It amazes me, yes, that I didn’t remember leading this visualization. But then again I have known I have had some memory issues related to PTSD following my plane crash and hospitalization (9 years ago this Sunday). See, it amazes me more that when leading this guided visualization I felt that the thoughts were completely original to me. I have read BHN at least twice and thumbed it many times, but somehow I didn’t remember this HEART CAVE page. That is…. page 1. So naturally, I am up in my head now trying to figure out how I am supposed to digest all of this…. how I integrate it into my understanding of the mind. Here’s my thoughts:

1. Trust that I don’t always consciously remember everything. My subconscious receives tons of information. Stuff gets in. Quit trying so hard to readreadread learnlearnlearn. My subconscious remembered the Heart Cave from reading BHN.

2. The Heart Cave is an archetype of our collective unconscious and I just tapped into that leading the visualization. I didn’t actually remember reading the book.

3. Maybe I shouldn’t concern myself with what comes out of me. It’s all happening by divine grace–memory problems and feeling like a different person from moment to moment, taboot. The Heart Cave idea came to me, in the moment, from God.

4. It doesn’t matter in the slightest if and how I came about remembering it or not remembering it. In this moment I remembered it. In the next I may forget it. Big whup! I am just performing mental flagellation and well-rehearsed cranial circus tricks trying to figure out how my mind works. Be Here Now.Be Here Now. Be Here Now.

I like 3 and 4.

- bt