Ram Dass Now

If someone clings too much to me in a relationship, I start to feel my freedom compromised, and I begin to distance myself emotionally. It’s happened before. And I am usually aware of it and feel guilty about it. This is why it’s understandable that my girlfriend has been doing the same with me recently. I have been very attracted tothe idea of being with her as much as possible and not sensing her needs to be herself apart from me. And I have been aware of it but can’t stop it or control it… with my mind.

I have found myself in this wonderful new relationship with a person that could only have come my way out of grace. I find her more beautiful physically than anyone on the planet. All her parts, sync up with all the pleasure centers of my brain. I have more activities in common with her than I have ever had with anybody (friend, girlfriend or relative). She loves me. We both want to be with each other for a long time. However, without my realizing it, I became very attached to the prospect of keeping these pleasure centers constantly clicking, so that I could make that “long time” a reality. So as my daily focus came to her for inspiration, assurance, and validation, the other aspects of my life started to fall away. Teaching yoga became a chore. So did my radio show. So did my volunteer work. I didn’t think it was related to how much mental energy I was giving to my attachment.

She started to distance herself consciously and unconsciously, even sadly developing an slight unexplainable depression. She wasn’t getting the space and freedom she needed. And I was blinded by my own neediness. I broke down in tears the moment I revealed to myself and her that I don’t trust in intimacy. Because at moment, though I had never emotionally pieced it together, my parents’ divorce at age 1 flashed into my mind. I’ve never felt solid towards an intimate relationship. I have never trusted a relationship, I guess. I couldn’t trust being apart. (I’m also having the hardest time allowing my new dog Veda offleash…no trust…but she’s also a dog).

That gave me some distance from it thankfully. And allowed me to feel a root, a reason behind my unconscious behavior. I never understood relationships. I am learning how to trust now. It’s only just begun. Can we be apart and feel grounded and in trust and in love? Sure it’s totally possible. Carin, I don’t know how it works across the world, but I’m wishing you strength and inner-love.

And then I sat for my first meditation in a while. After 30 minutes of fighting against thinking about my relationship and eventually letting myself THINK about it, it came to me. I am exactly where I am supposed to be, feeling exactly how I am supposed to feel. Being guided. Unfolding lawfully. And then I realized, it was the first time I connected to God and guru deeply for the past two months. You can probably smell the apathy in some of my previous posts.

The desire had brought me to believe I was the creator of my own plentiful or abject destiny. That I was in control. And it was such a seductive thought. So seductive that it brought me out of the work I had been doing for a while. So seductive that it made me less of “me” and more aligned with my desire than anything else. I love the person I am with dearly. She makes my heart light when I’m not coming from a desperate place. She is an angel to me and I am learning how to love and be loved, and it is completely different than I thought it should be. Trust.

“All I can do ALL the time is to COOL MYSELF OUT.”

This phrase jumped out at me. it helped me “RE MEMBER” something that always gets covered over. My main Big Y Yoga teacher gave me the meditation technique of “….sssshhhhhh….” It’s one of the best teachings for me. I so easily get caught up in juggling methods and techniques around that I have gone through 4 or 5 in a 30 minute meditation. I am thankful I know of many techniques. But what good is a technique, if I can’t stay with it? The most profound ‘technique’ at my still-beginner stage of meditating is just to cool down. Become quiet. Stillness. ….ssssshhhhhh…..

And really that’s my technique all the time like RD is talking about on page 44. Everything becomes sadhana. To become quiet. To develop that calm center. Constantly working on myself. But I have one thought that I toss around here…. If I am constantly working on myself and trying to take care of my spiritual evolution, it seems to me that there is a lack of trust in the unfolding of it all naturally. Do we have to do this sadhana? I can fork out a couple of answers here, but what do you think.

I guess not getting bent out of shape about my sadhana is important, regardless. Also, I think there is a fine line between “ahh sadhana…” and “whoa… I need to do this practice to feel better about myself…. to have done something productive.” For neurotics like myself and Dr. Richard Alpert (and … well… you, too…), sadhana can be trap of the ego. Dharmic sadhana is a different thing. It’s easy. There’s very little effort. But when the ego is involved as it tends to be, any sadhana can become just another method of grasping at a fantasy future. Enlightenment or what have you.

The other side of this is that. Of course you must use the ego to “work on yourself”. Only then can you get to a place where the ego can fall away. Using the thorn to remove the thorn. But then again. What we read a few weeks ago…. it’s determined through karma. So I really don’t have to make decisions about my sadhana, right? “Will I do it? When do I do it? Shouldn’t I do it? I should have done it better.” Because: the moment we are going to wake up is totally determined. We’ll do the amount of sadhana appropriate to our readiness to receive it’s effect–everytime. The thing that frustrates me about a lot of this is of course that it doesn’t make sense to my thinking mind. So I have to trust that it makes sense on another level. Do I do or not do? I think at some level, there’s not even decisions being made. And there’s not paradox. And conflict. And frustration. That’s when you have to let Meher Baba or Whoever-ji help.

Regardless…. …..sssshhhhhh…..

With you on the Autumnal Equinox… reading to begin new things and turn inward and quiet down. Fall is my lucid and quiet season. ahhhhhhhh.

- bt

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