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

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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Pg 17. So many layers of reality/consciousness that we cannot possibly know with our minds, but we intuit it, we “infer the presence of something else” (pg 18).  All the levels, known, unknown, unknowable, are all out there, all in here. Except trying to grasp at them doesn’t seem to work. As a matter of fact, I have learned that the more I try to read and reason the existence of spirit, the less likely I am to believe it! Why? Because I’m trying to apply dynamics/rules from one level of consciousness to a completely different one (among other reasons in all levels–more on that later). There are just so many ways to experience being-ness–even just at this level of waking consciousness! Not to mention the other layers William James writes about. We get to just be HERE now! But we know those other places are there too, but for this, we stay here.

We all are tuned in to some of these other ‘realities’ around us. It’s different for each of us.  We may experience them as intuition (intangible knowledge), or as natural talent (often behaviorally expressed). We just know there are pockets of ‘understanding’ that we cannot quite explain. So we don’t have to (explain, that is). And we may even recognize some healthy things to do that encourage these periods of ‘getting it’: Yoga, Taiji, meditation, music, prayer, exercise, Qigong, Pilates, reading good books . . . the more you do them, the more you seem to have the ‘times of understanding’ last longer. You’re actually just paying better attention.

Sometimes though, we get back here to the more simple things, like just letting the sight of a child help you experience God in your soul,  your gut, in your bones (Pg 16, “it’s got intuitive validity”), with no intellectual explanation needed. You know the feeling I’m talking about. . . when you’re busy being all grumpy, and you inexplicably allow yourself to melt into mirth at the site of child barking, pretending to be a puppy; no longer worrying about that project you’ve got to turn in, no longer ‘worried’ about ‘losing your center.’ Besides, what’s so special about the center anyway? At this point, I’m not so certain there is a center, except when we draw boundaries (and most of us do), then ‘center’ is a useful practice. Do you draw boundaries around surrender? (Pg 20)

Please remember that page numbers refer to the Brown Pages, From Bindu to Ojas, in Be Here Now. Be Love Now soon to come!

Namaste’
Jon

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(P 14) “NO ACCIDENTS!” “It’s all determined.” “It’s just your vantage point that you’re sort of . . . stuck in.”  Relinquishing control over this moment is not the same thing as angrily judging the moment, then tossing it aside; far from it. “Going beyond” the judgment, beyond the paradox, beyond the ego IS the freedom. Except you don’t ‘go’ anywhere. Where would you go?

In these pages, we see messages of being moved through fire, drawn though transformation. The first time I felt that ‘pull’ of God, I was about 5 years old in North Carolina, wide open and trusting the church my family attended. For some reason, one day at church, I felt pulled to sit close, not in the mezzanine with my family. Then, when the minister asked for anybody who felt called to Baptism to come forward, I found my 5 year old body moving forward. It was one of the most powerful moments in my life. In that moment, I was a moth drawn to the light of God. A 5 year-old volunteered. Sometimes I forget that feeling, that draw. Again, I am so grateful for the teachers that come into my life and remind me (Ram Dass, bloggers on this site, friends that have been on my path, the special Angels in my world). Y’all are the light.

Here’s the thing: Maybe I’m still the goo in the cocoon (see other post below) before becoming the moth/butterfly. What can I do about that? Nada, nothing, zilch, zero. So I hang out beyond the expectations by accepting whatever I am, wherever I am, as best I can in that moment. I am not limited by the expectation that I should be a moth, or if I am a moth already, that I should be drawn into the flame just yet. For now, I just love all of this light–the big fires from each of you, and the smaller lights of fleeting circumstances.

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So many ways to put words on all of this. And so many ways to interpret it all!  Please visit www.gatehealing.com/blog and www.twitter.com/gatehealing for other perspectives, thoughts, and meditations. And as always, please read the comments on all of our posts on this site (simply click on the “3 comments” text at the bottom of each post)–there are so many beautiful teachers out there who are sharing here. You can also see our discussions with each other. Also, friend me at www.facebook.com/gatehealing
~~Jon