Ram Dass Quotes

As you progress with your sadhana you may find it necessary to change your occupation. Or you may find that it is only necessary to change the way in which you perform your current occupation in order to bring it into line with your new understanding of how it all is. The more conscious that a being becomes, the more he can use any occupation as a vehicle for spreading light. The next true being of Buddha-nature that you meet may appear as a bus driver, a doctor, a weaver, an insurance salesman, a musician, a chef, a teacher, or any of the thousands of roles that are required in a complex society — the many parts of Christ’s body. You will know him because the simple dance that may transpire between you — such as handing him change as you board the bus — will strengthen in you the faith in the divinity of man. It’s as simple as that.

What is important is that you get your house in order at each stage of the journey so that you can proceed. “If some day it be given to you to pass into the inner temple, you must leave no enemies behind.” — de Lubicz For example, if you never got on well with one of your parents and you have left that parent behind on your journey in such a way that the thought of that parent arouses anger or frustration or self-pity or any emotion . . . you are still attached. You are still stuck. And you must get that relationship straight before you can finish your work. And what, specifically, does “getting it straight” mean? Well, it means re-perceiving that parent, or whoever it may be, with total compassion . . . seeing him as a being of the spirit, just like you, who happens to be your parent . . . and who happens to have this or that characteristic, and who happens to be at a certain stage of his evolutionary journey. You must see that all beings are just beings . . . and that all the wrappings of personality and role and body are the coverings. Your attachments are only to the coverings, and as long as you are attached to someone else’s covering you are stuck, and you keep them stuck, in that attachment. Only when you can see the essence, can see God, in each human being do you free yourself and those about you. It’s hard work when you have spent years building a fixed model of who someone else is to abandon it, but until that model is superceded by a compassionate model, you are still stuck. In India they say that in order to proceed with one’s work one needs one’s parents’ blessings. Even if the parent has died, you must in your heart and mind, re-perceive that relationship until it becomes, like every one of your current relationships, one of light. If the person is still alive you may, when you have proceeded far enough, revisit and bring the relationship into the present. For, if you can keep the visit totally in the present, you will be free and finished. The parent

That’s who we all are on this path, spiritual family and friends. It’s just one big family. We’re all relatives until we realize we’re really all the same and there’s only one of us — one loving awareness. May you be one in that love.

There is a growing Awareness in the medical community that a lot of what has been diagnosed and treated as depression among older people may instead be a natural process of reorientation. Whether we attribute it to cellular-biochemical mechanisms, or psychodynamics, or spiritual processes, there’s a kind of drawing-inward that seems to be part of the process of aging. Not a paranoid drawing-inward; not being afraid of the world. Just a kind of deepening. I think it’s probably the nearness of death that leads many people to want to reflect on what life is all about.

Who I am is awareness and deep love, a presence beyond experience within a temporal, changing form. Who I am is a soul, a soul without a name, address, social security number, or biography, who isn't born and doesn't die. I am.

If you observe well, your own heart will answer.” — de Lubicz

The most important aspect of love is not in giving or the receiving: it's in the being. When I need love from others, or need to give love to others, I'm caught in an unstable situation. Being in love, rather than giving or taking love, is the only thing that provides stability. Being in love means seeing the Beloved all around me.

Treat everyone you meet like God in drag.

You are getting the benefit of all the work you‘ve ever done up until now, which has put you in the place where you‘re reading this bizarre book about a peculiar topic that most of the population couldn‘t care less about.

When you go out into the woods, and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree. The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying ‘You are too this, or I’m too this.’ That judgment mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.

Once you have drunk from the water of unconditional love, no other well can satisfy your thirst. The pangs of separation may become so intense that seeking the affection of the Beloved becomes an obsession.

Instead of seeing my life as a personal history or career, I see myself as a pilgrim on a spiritual journey. I am no longer an isolated ego narrating my own storyline; I am a soul, evolving toward oneness. I am a pinprick of awareness in the star field of the cosmos. I am part of it all.

We end up going through hell in meditation to quiet our mind, not because somebody says, “You ought to quiet your mind,” but because our agitated mind is driving us up the wall, and it’s keeping us from getting on with it.

The true devotees of God never wear saffron, carry malas (prayer beads), or put on sandalwood. You can’t know them unless they want it, and then you can only know them as much as they allow.

Relationships only work in a spiritual sense when you and I really see that we are one.