Ep. 251 – Resting in ‘I Am’

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Welcome to the Ram Dass Here and Now podcast. This is episode 251, resting in I Am. This is a continuation of the talk from The Last Episode 250 Eat It Like It Is, and it was given in Austin, Texas in the early 1990s. And like the last one, it just sort of cuts through time and space. It feels like he's talking to us right now in this moment. And it answers some really deep questions. You know, in this role and in my role as yoga teacher, I often get the question, you know, what is my dharma? What is mine to do in the world? And then how do I live in this world? Is a question so many of us are asking. And this talk, as far as I can tell, it really answers those questions. What I hear in it is this finding the balance between the witness and the personality, the head and the heart, which he often talks about. But I also hear this part about trusting, trusting the world, trusting our inner, deeper knowing. Many episodes ago he said something that really caught my attention, which was be careful arguing with God, as if to say how important the step of allowing is now that might not be all of the steps, but it's often the first necessary one to allow. So that's a little bit of what I hear. But we want to know what you hear, what comes up for you in this episode. And so we have these gatherings a week after each episode airs. And at this last one, one of the participants said that she had just listened to the episode and then she came onto the community gathering and some things clicked for her and she really got this deeper understanding. Something else emerged for her and she said she wouldn't have gotten it if she hadn't joined the so I really encourage you to sign up. You can find out more by going to ramdas.org Fellowship and I hope to see you there. Also want to let you know about this incredible offering. Over the years we've had many, many requests to have the annual retreat videos available for public to watch. So these retreats, if you don't know about them, have been a cornerstone of Ram Dass life and of Love Serv Member foundation for over a decade. And each year there's an incredible lineup of teachers. And so over 10 years you can imagine there's of course Ram Dass and then Jack Kornfield and Krishna Das and Annie Lamott and Roshi, Joan Halifax and Mirabai Bush, Sharon Salzberg, Robert Svoboda, Bob Thurman, Nina Rao, Valerie Carr, Mirabai Starr. So many. And today we are opening the virtual doors of Ram Dass's Inner Academy, which unveils this collection that contains over 200 hours of video and audio and that includes teachings and practices and dharma talks and workshops. And each year we'll be adding a lot more content. So it's really this incredible offer to dive deeper with some intimate conversations and sweetness that you may not have seen or heard before. So go to ramdas.orgcourses to get more information and maybe as you do, you pick up some magic mind to help with your brain and help you relax and not have those coffee jitters. And so you can get a discount by going to magicmind.com Ram Dass and using the code Ram Dass. So as always, we give thanks to all of you who support this network so we can keep doing this. We give thanks to our sponsors and of course we give such thanks to Ram Dass and all of his teachers and for the privilege to be here to listen to these talks. And so we dedicate whatever good comes from them to all beings everywhere. So here is Ram Dass here and now.

This is the place Inside a being. Where? In the scriptures they talk about a place where there is a niche where a candle burns, where the winds of stuff come and blow and push and pull and the flame never flickers. This is the place, the I amness from which Christ can say, Jesus can say, look fellas, what do you think you can do to me? What are you going to do? Scorn me? You're going to put thorns in my head? Go ahead. What do you want to do now? Spit on me? Great. Okay. What else? Oh, you're going to nail me up. Okay, here we go. Good. I'll drop back in a few days to show you. The whole thing is a hype. That isn't who I am at all. You can nail, you know, you can dent my mg, but you're not going to get me. It's like Ramana Maharshi, this beautiful Indian saint. He was dying and his devotee said, oh, Bhagavan, don't leave us, don't leave us. And he looks perplexed. He says, don't be silly. Where can I go? Haakoin, the Zen poet, says, you coming and going is nowhere but where you are. Here we are. There's coming and there's going. There's meetings and there's not meetings. To rest in. I am makes the whole world look quite different than if you are busy being somebody, doing something. Now, from the place of I am, here's where it gets really interesting. From the place of I am, when you look out at the universe of forms. Ah, there's. There's a rose. How beautiful. How beautiful that the law manifests that way. But as the musicians were singing to Shiva, there's also the chaos. There's storms, there are plagues, there is war, there is pestilence, there's violence, there's fear, there's loneliness, there's lust, there's anger, there's doubt. How perfect. How absolutely beautiful. Doesn't that sound creepy? How could you be in a place where you could look at all of the stuff of the condition of forms and appreciate the perfection of God made manifest? It's just like looking at law. If you study psychology and the laws of human motivation, if you study genetics and the laws of the DNA, if you study physics, if you study chemistry, if you study anthropology, if you study history, if you study archaeology, if you study astronomy, astrology, on and on and on and on. All you see is the exquisite beauty of law. I used to. I once was teaching at Esalen in California many years ago, and they gave me a House up in the hills. And it came complete with a cat. And it was a very lovely cat and I liked the cat a lot. And every morning I would sit down to meditate and the cat loved me a lot, apparently. And the cat would go out in the morning and catch its morning food, which was often a little lizard or a mouse. And then because it loved me, it would come and bring its food to eat, hanging out with me. And it would sit right down here, often with a lizard who was still alive with its tail flapping. And I was busy being holy and meditating. And there would be. I could feel the cat and this furry lovely cat. I loved hitting and playing with this thing and eating it and the lizard flapping its tail. And I felt bad for the lizard and I hated the cat, but I loved the cat and I didn't know who to hate and who to love. I was very confused. I was so busy judging that I couldn't accept the fact that this was the way it was. Cats do eat lizards. How do you like that? And they're not bad. You bad cat. What are you gonna do? Teach the bad cat not to eat the lizard? We can breed a group of soy eating cats. Somehow we can handle it when it's cats and lizards a little bit, even though it wrenches us. But boy, when it gets to be, oh, humans, that's a whole different matter, isn't it? If you were resting in your I am, you would look and you would see only the perfection of it all. And you would see that what we did in the 60s is what created Ronald Reagan in the 80s. You would see the way polarities work. You'd see the way forces polarize and what you feed the opposite. And you'd see all this stuff happening. You just see it as law unfolding right before you. You'd see that all of it is the creation of the five hindrances that Buddha pointed out come with a human birth. Lust and greed. That's just one, that isn't even two. Lust and greed. Then there's hatred and ill will. Then there's agitation. Then there's our old friends sloth and torpor. And then there's doubt. You all have them, otherwise you wouldn't be here. Oh, you just came down to bless us. Now if you can stand back in your IM and you look at the human condition, what did you expect, a rose garden? I mean, can you imagine setting up a commune? Well, who will we have in it? Well, we gotta have people with lust and greed, hatred and ill Will, agitation, sloth and torpor and doubt. Well, that's what we got. That's what this commune is. It's called Earth. And this is humanity. Were the whole situation just I am looking at all of the forms that manifest out of I am and the perfection of it all as just law in that impersonal self, you would be able from that vantage point to just say it is what it is. And you would allow it to be. And you would see that all forms are continuously changing. And you would see that the nature of the suffering of beings and is because they cling to a form and try to resist change. But change always happens. There is age and there's sickness and there's suffering and there's death, and that's all part of it. And they'd see all of this as law, that there is law that includes change and flow. And it would be somewhat cold. It's like you're walking along and you see an old lady get mugged and you say, well, that's karma. Yik yuck. What a cold bastard. But you and I are in an interesting predicament now, because as I said, since we are impeccable warriors, we are not just the I am, we are also these entities, souls. We are also all the rest. We also are human beings with bodies and personalities and human hearts. And when you look at what the world looks like through you, a human heart, it is really horrible and it really hurts because you have the qualities of empathy, an ability to feel what it feels like for another person to suffer. And if the baby cries out of real pain, we all feel that pain. And the starvation of the children in Africa, that's us, that's fellow human beings, and we're feeling it. And as a human being, the pain is all but unbearable. And if you are only human, The fear and the pain get so great that it drives you into a set of reactions which you can see everywhere you look. It either drives you into denial and hedonism, saying, well, it's all going to blow up anyway. I'm going to get what I can. And you know that you recognize that one, or it drives you into I've got to do what I can to make this better. Whatever little bit I can do, I've got to do it. I've got to help somebody, I've got to do something. And you look for ways to relieve suffering. And if somebody falls over, you pick them up. And if you can help, you help. And if you receive a call for aid, you help. If you can Help. Because that's your humanness. Or out of your fear and the feeling that your existence is threatened by the existing conditions, you grab onto a belief system and hold onto it more fiercely and fiercely in order to feel righteous, feeling that if you are right, you have might and you are protected from some horrible fate befalling you. You are one of the 144,000 that's going to get in in time, whether you're going to be a good Islamic or a good Jew or a good Christian or a good whatever. Because that fear, you look up and you see good. You look out in the world and you see the way things are, and you see it in terms of good and evil. You see it the highest part you can see from your humanness. If you are stuck in your human condition, you look up and the farthest you can see is the two, good and evil. Even though you may be mouthing one, there is only one God. And G. Manly Hall's beautiful line, he who knows not that the prince of darkness is but the other face of the king of light knows not me, that just as form as the one comes into the two, without some separation, like positive and negative, you don't get any form at all. It comes into dualism. That's what form is. It's all in the universe of dualism, of two. There's positive and negative and dark and light and rich and poor and old and young and good and evil. And when you get frightened enough, you try to grab onto good and push away evil as a way to protect your house. And if you look at the world today, you will see if you go inside all the different players, you'll see that each one thinks that they are good and the other guys are evil. And you hardly know where to find the bad guys. The bad guys are the guys that don't agree with your goodness. For most of us, to keep our hearts open like Gandhi over Gandhi's tomb, Mahatma Gandhi's tomb is the line written, think of the poorest person you have ever seen and ask whether your next act will be of use to that person. That's a hard one to do, isn't it? Think of all the acts you just did today. How do I live my life without closing off something? It's too unbearable if I'm just a human, to keep it open. We all have these little perimeters of caring. It's like I'm on the board of an organization called the Sava foundation, which is an organization designed to get rid of unnecessary world blindness. Turns out that 80% of the blindness in the world is unnecessary. Not far out. Most of it, of course, in third world countries usually can be cured with early enough with trachoma and things like that, with tetracycline drops or vitamin deficiency. And then later by giving vitamins and then later on with cataracts. It can be done with a cataract operation. And in India at this moment, there are 7 million people waiting for a cataract operation. They are blind. And being blind in a third world country, I'll tell you, it's not seeing eye dogsville. I mean, it's heavy duty. You're out of the labor force, the family can hardly feed themselves and they feed you and you lose your status. The whole thing is very heavy duty. Seven million people waiting for an operation that takes four minutes to perform. And now with inflation, we now realize it costs $10. Now think of what you've done with $10 in the past couple of days. Now, if your parent, your father came up to you or your mother or your brother or your sister came up to you and said, I can't see, could you give me $10 for a cataract operation? Gee, I'd like to, but I'm going to the movies. Well, how about if it was your uncle, even one you don't like, or your uncle's friend or somebody that came up to you on the street that was blind and said, look, I'm blind, I'm not asking for a handout, but would you give me $10 so that I can get my sight back? Where could you be going that you wouldn't make every attempt to do that because that being was right in front of you. But somehow those 7 million people over there, they're them. Somehow or other, we are saved from it a little bit because it's too unbearable for us to live our life. I don't think that the instruction of thinking of the poorest person has any. Therefore I should in the shoulds. I don't think you and I can get away any longer with the shoddiness of a world of shoulds. Somebody said to me a delightful thing the other day. They said, I'm just sort of tired of being should upon. I think we have to demand more of ourselves. I think we have to recognize that beyond our thinking minds there is an intuitive heart mind that knows and understands and that hears all, all of what is, including our skills, our condition, our culture, our background. The conditions in Africa and India and Thailand and Cambodia. The world situation not intellectually rationally linearly, but in a gestalt totality. And we trust what comes out of us in the way we act. Because each of us is a unique form of manifestation and must manifest in its uniqueness as its way of integrating that part of us which sees the perfection and that human part of us that hurts like hell. I mean, I'm on the mailing list, I'm sure, for every organization that needs money. And in just a week's time, I'm sure I'm not on every one, but in just a week's time, I will be invited to contribute to the disappearing bird population, the whales, Amnesty International, where human beings are being tortured, feed the children, the fight against the moral majority, being asked by Kennedy or McGovern or something. On and on and on. I mean, just piles of this stuff. How do I decide which leper do I give the money to? Somebody says, don't you realize the anti nuclear people, well, this is the important one. I mean, if this one goes up, all the rest of it goes. But I could imagine last winter I spent some time in Florence, Italy, hanging out with Michelangelo because he's like, really there. And I could imagine I was studying the history of all that scene. And I know the Medicis were really quite outrageous. And I could imagine at some point people coming along and Michelangelo's chipping away at something and they say, hey, Mike, come on, don't screw around with a stone. We got to go down and protest. And Mike says, no, gee, I really have to work on the stone today. Oh, Mike, come on, there are important things to do. Well, the Medicis are long gone, but Michelangelo's work in the Sistine Chapel and those statues, those are a statement of the way God manifests through the human heart. Just as Bach is and just as Mick Jagger is, and just as on and on and on, just as anybody that transcends and lets their art come through their form. And we are part of an extremely complex organism in which there's no rational way. Because if you spend all your energy not getting extreme exterminated, and that's all you did, and that's all your civilization was, I'm not sure it would be much very interesting to be alive in. And yet you can't walk away from it. A mother comes up to me and she says, I love to meditate, but my kids are so. And I say, dear heart, your way to God is through your kids, not in spite of them. And the cacophony, the jarring quality, instead of allowing the meditation to be just what is just? What is because I am, which is where you are meditating into. Can look at the universe just as it is. It doesn't live on the world of if only. Look at how much in your own life you do with the. If only. If only people would see the value of peace. If only I didn't have this wart. If only I had more money. If only I were older. If only I were younger. If only I didn't have cancer. If only I lived in a warm climate with the ocean. If only I lived in a cold climate. But if only. It's perfect. But if if only this traffic. If only this. If only this drink were hotter. If only it were colder. If only I more rested. If only I had more space to myself from the place of I am. You see, all those if onlys is just law. Oh, there's more if onlys. See, look at those little if onlys just all over the place. How interesting the fun is, is playing all these games inside yourself all at once. If you just go into your I am, you are completely cold and you're missing. As Emmanuel said to me, you're in a schoolroom. Why don't you take the curriculum? The curriculum is your humanity. You're a human being. You've got a human heart. You've got passions, you've got desires, you've got fears, you've got excitement, you've got curiosity, you've got loneliness, you've got jealousy, you've got pain. And wow, it's rich and thick. If you push it away just to get high, to go to la la land, you are missing the show. The show isn't looked at from afar, it's participated in. But if you're only participating, you're like Lady Macbeth. You're Lady Macbeth on the stage. Then you go off stage and you still think you're Lady Macbeth. You get caught in your humanity. You get caught in roles. For example, I'm a truck driver. But dear, we're in bed. No, I'm a truck driver. You know, it's a. It's like. I mean, if you look at your own life, you'll see how you buy into a role. And it gets so real. I'm a mother. Yeah, but your children are 40 years old. I'm a mother. You know, it's like. You can get caught in either direction. You can get caught in your divinity or you can get caught in your humanity. And the fun is, is to recognize who you are. You are both simultaneously. You are divine and you are human. The I am expands to allow it all. You just allow it all. And then you do what you need to do. And you will feel the way in which your part in humanity must manifest. And trust may be to care for children, it may be to meditate, it may be to work with your own desires for pleasure. You'll notice that even when you're in the middle of the most greedy, lustful act from one point of view, there'll be a little bit of consciousness noticing it all. Once you start to awaken, though you may want to, you can't quite get back to sleep again. You'll say, look, I just want one more rush. I want one more trip uninterrupted by God. Hey, God, would you look the other way? I just want one more pizza. You know, I just want to be able to eat the pizza and just be the eater of the pizza. I don't want to be eating a pizza, you know, I don't want to be that. I don't want to be a judge. I don't want to be a noticer. I just want to eat the pizza. Leave me alone already. But unfortunately, once it happens, it just keeps being there until finally, instead of pushing it away, you see how it enriches every moment, how the moments get thicker and thicker. The immediacy of what is even the worst mucky stuff, it just gets thicker and richer and thicker and richer. And the quieter you get and the less attached you are to what you do, the more you will find that you move towards doing those things which relieve the suffering of all sentient beings, because you are part of them all. And there's no rule about how you will relieve the suffering. Only you know. And you will only know from moment to moment in your own heart. This podcast is brought to you by the Love Serve Remember foundation and Ramdas.org we appreciate you listening and we appreciate all the support that you've given us. Please continue that support and donate@ramdas.org we can then continue to share what Ram Dass has been sharing for all of these years. Thank you.