Ep. 269 – Ram Dass and Stephen Levine: An Opportunity to Grow

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It's Raghu Marcus and I'm back with Ram Dass here and now. And I'm happy to be back here. It's been a while since I've introduced an episode and today we have quite a wonderful episode which is part two of of talk that we put out around that includes Ram Dass and Stephen Levine. And I'm going to talk about that in a minute, but I do want to shout out, do a shout out for our wonderful support, for the wonderful support that we get from our sponsors, people that really, you know, help us to be able to make available all of these incredible podcasts. And of course particularly here, Ram Dass and Magic Mind, the Magic Mind elixir, which you've heard me talk about before, they, they really address something that's so elemental. It's actually what I talk about a lot on my mind rolling podcasts, which is a commitment to support balance. And there are many different ways in which we can support ourselves in terms of becoming much more balanced in our bodies, in our minds, in our spirit, and in this case, Magic Mind. Really. I mean we have a lot of stress going on these days, don't we? I mean, not be too blase, but this is Just sometimes it's almost too much really the stress day to day and that causes sleep issues as well. So I I want to highlight a couple of things from Magic mine and the the way in which it supports mental performance clarity the way it supports sleep particularly which directly relates with supporting de stressing and these little shots that you get when you order go a long way to contributing along with everything else that you need to be that you I won't say you need. We need daily to be doing to create the kind of balance in our lives which is absolutely so fundamental to our happiness. And so it's also and I must mention this because I think it's really important. It's about building long term habits so you get into this habit where you this elixir really is creating long term balance. It's allowing stress to dissipate much more easily and it's allowing for sleep alongside of meditation, alongside of mindfulness, alongside of exercise. All of it contributes. So you know you can go and go to magicmind.com Ramdas J A N January which this is the month and you can get 45% off the magic Mind bundle which combines the focus and sleep shots. So magicmind.com ramdas jan j a n all one word and take advantage of this. It'll really help. I also want to do a call out for somebody new that's supporting us and our ability to deliver these podcasts. It's a wonderful spot in Costa Rica and it's called Reunion and it's a non for profit which is way different. Beachfront Wellness center on the Pacific Ocean on the private beach. It's just fantastic. I haven't been there yet but I am going to go because I do love Costa Rica and this chance to be immersed in a community that offers support and fellowship, holistic practices helping you to heal and grow and deepen awareness and you can take along, you know that Magic mind elixir with you and that's a wonderful combination. They do meditation, yoga, breath work and other traditional modalities. And you know what's incredible, they're going to and you know I've been talking, talking to the owner Brad, he's a wonderful gentleman and they are going to bring in and they've had it created a statue of Hanuman and they'll have a temple and you'll be able to sit with Hanuman in the temple and I intend to go there and do some Hanuman chalisis as soon as that happens. So it's a wonderful way to connect deeply with Other like minded people and yourself and reunion. So you go to reunion experience.org that's reunion experience.org which has the retreats. And if you just want to go there and spend time, it acts as a hotel. I think you can still get all of the yoga and everything else that you would want to participate in. That's reunionhotelandwellness.com and this is a place that I personally am way looking forward to going to as soon as possible actually, given what's going on in our world here in January. Okay. This podcast, I think I said it's. It's a conversation with Ram Dass and Stephen Levine. It's called An Opportunity to grow, part one. This is episode 269. Part one was 268, the heart of healing. But in this record, first of all, Stephen Levine and Ram Dass were the forerunners of the movement to make death part of life, shall I say, from the 70s on, along with Dale Borglum, Ramdev, our brother. And Stephen was, he passed a number of years ago, an exceptional representation of the teachings around normalizing death. And in this talk, so I highly recommend. I mean, he's just fantastic. And the two of them together are quite wonderful. Ram Dass talks about how we are healed out of our separateness through our shared caring and our shared heart, which is everything that encapsulates what Ram Dass was about shared caring and shared heart. So, you know, and they talk a lot about death is an opportunity to grow. Everything in our lives, including the process of dying, is an opportunity to grow. And it's about shifting our perspectives to touch that possibility that we are more than our bodies. So this is so important in our culture now. It really is normalizing death and having it be part of life. At the stage that I'm at and other people from the baby boomer age, you know, this is something that is. It opens up a field of awareness in a much more critical way, of course, because we're closer to. But it's for. I've said this before on many podcasts, it doesn't matter if you're 20 years old. This is something to learn how to live life in the moment, as Ram Dass would say. And that moment includes, we don't know when we're going to die. Anything can happen anytime. And here's what Ram Dass says. And at the simplest level, I'd say the statement is the antidote to burnout. And the statement that is the antidote to burnout is the perspective that you are a growing being. In everything, including your own life and your own death. And approaching death is an opportunity to grow. So this is a wonderful talk. It's part two to this. When was this done? And it was actually done in the 80s during the AIDS crisis. So Stephen talks about that a bunch. And please take advantage of this. It's quite enlightening. And I'm so happy to be here with everybody again. This is Ram Dass here and now. And we will see you next time on the Be Here Now Network.

That meeting of those support meeting of those buddies volunteers last week, it turned out that all of the people that happened to be gathered in that group were gay. That's not true, obviously, of all support groups. It just happened to be of that group. And I'm bisexual, and I've lived in the gay community for many, many years. And I looked around at this group of people and I realized that in the past, I would have been in the room with this group, and the dominant criterion, judgmental criterion, would be sexual attractiveness. And since I was old and sort of irrelevant, I would have had all that separateness. I mean, this is. I'm letting myself way out here. And I looked at each of them with the others, and I saw in them all the personality qualities that at one time each of them might have been very bitchy, very judgmental, very mean to each other around that sexual dimension. And what I saw was that the situation they were facing together was bringing out qualities in each of them and a way in which we were meeting that was healing all of us in that we were being healed out of our separateness, through our shared caring, through our shared heart. And I would bet if I took a sample of people in this room, you, A preponderance of you would recognize just what I'm saying and would realize that this. This intense moment of truth that we are. We are coming together to reflect about is bringing forth in each of us qualities that are allowing us to be with other human beings in a way that is healing. We're being healed out of a sickness of a society. It's a collective sickness. It's not a personal sickness. It's a sickness of separateness, of isolation, of paranoia, of loneliness, of desperate gathering of things to hide from the loneliness and the intense reality of sickness, of death, of the unknown that we're sharing together. On a windy hill in a dark night, moonless night. Suddenly we are alive again. We're alive again. How strange. How strange that it takes this kind of trauma to awaken us. How strong the socialization process was into our isolation that it takes this drama to bring us back together. The way underlying this, these ideas is a very basic one that life is an opportunity for growth. It's an opportunity for awakening, for awakening out of an illusion of separateness. Awakening out of separateness. And that once recognized, every life experience becomes grist for the mill, becomes the stuff through which you can awaken every bit of it. It's not just when you're sitting in meditation or sitting before a spiritual teacher, or you climb the mountain in the Himalayas. It's when you deal with your parents. It's when you deal with the irs. That's all the spiritual teachings. Those are all the chances for you to awaken out of the stuff that keeps you asleep, suffering and in pain. It's all the opportunity. And at the simplest level, I'd say the statement is the antidote to burnout is the perspective that you are a growing being and that everything, including your own life and your own death and approaching death is an opportunity to grow. But for that to work requires some kind of a philosophy, some kind of a perspective about this human life. I mean, if you figure that when you die, you're dead and that's it, and that all you were were your body and that when your body decays, you decay and when your body dies, you die, why the hell would you want to grow at the time of dying? Grow for what? Towards what? Unless you suspected that that model you have in your mind that you are your body, that you are your limited self, that you are that which is dying, may just be that just a model, and that there's another possibility. Then you're going to look for the cracks, the cracks between the veil, where you can stick your nose in between and see the possibility and figure out how to touch the place in yourself that is not just your body, then it makes sense to use everything around you. Otherwise it doesn't make sense. Because if you are just your body and most of you are dealing with people who think that all the time they are suffering intensely all through life because they've got a milk from every second more. Because that's all there is. And if they don't get it now, there's nothing, and get more and more and more because you're going to be dead. And it's scary. It's very frightening. One of the fellows that the volunteers said to me last week, he said, my problem in dealing with my buddy, the fellow I work with, is that he's my age. And I feel that I Want to lose all those opportunities for life experiences by dying young. And in a way, the deepest pain is for people who have not yet touched the possibility that they are more than their body. That's the deepest pain. Because the body, even in somebody that is incredible. I mean, you look at somebody who's at the height of their powers and health and virility and the cultural heroes and, you know, they're decaying at this very moment. It's built into the system. Buddha's basic teaching was, everything's changing. If you cling to that which changes, changes and try to hold on to it, you're going to suffer. It's built into the system. How can you not suffer? I mean, I have a stock at the moment. I'm not supposed to collect money, but somebody gave me a stock and the stock went way up. And suddenly from being somebody who was poor, I was somebody who was rich. I mean, it just happened like this. It just happened. Strange enough, strangely, I thought, okay, I'll be rich. I mean, it's relatively rich. It's not rich rich. It's not like Bhagwan Rajneeshi. So I started to feel like I was rich. It didn't change anything, but I felt like I was rich. You see, this morning I was looking.

For.

A bun to have. We were at the hotel and we went out looking for a cinnamon roll or something. We walked into the Safeway, which is the only place we could find. It wasn't a French bakery or anything, it was just a Safeway. It was going to be very simple and humble. But I was feeling rich and expansive and I could certainly buy a cinnamon bun. And my eye flashed across the newspaper and it says, biggest stock drop in years 40. And suddenly I lost my appetite. I didn't want the cinnamon roll. Just. Suffering from clinging.

Ram Dass is touching on something that I think, particularly in the context of aids, is unmistakably clear.

The youth.

This disease is very non discriminatory. But it seems right now in this country to be affecting people who've only been alive a few decades. Many of the people who have it aren't even halfway through their life expectancy. I don't know what the percent I would guess that most of the people who have it are not halfway through their life expectancy. There's no. In my experience, someone may know of something. But in my experience, working for 10 years with the term Leo, I know of no other situation like this that's ever evolved a disease that at this point is particularly touching young people Young people. I mean, anybody younger than 48. I don't know why I chose that age, of course, other than that, 48.

Kids.

And next year it'll be everybody under 49. You didn't know that one.

It's okay, Sonny.

There is in this culture, in most cultures, when death approaches, or illness or pain approaches, a particular kind of recoil when it's happening to someone young. The death of children, for instance, is considered the greatest of tragedies. Many people who find themselves ill are lamenting not just that they're ill, that their social life is cut down, that their activities are cut down, but that it's happening so soon. Of course, everyone who's ill thinks it's so soon. But for many of these people, they've only been alive 25 years, 35 years, and a tremendous anger arises, a feeling of being cheated. And that anger has a tendency to surround their pain and make it very difficult to open around their pain to let the healing end. There's nothing to judge in that anger. Of course it's there. Naturally it's there, but uninvestigated, it burns our heart. It makes our pain inaccessible. So much self hatred gathers around the pain. We're hanging out with a fellow who had AIDS many years ago, fellow by.

The name of Bill.

He'd come to some retreats. He came the first retreat he came, he was pretty ill. He had, I think, some lesions showing them, indeed had some involvement with opportunistic infections. And in the course of the retreat, Bill, quote, got it. He saw his priorities change. He saw he wasn't just the body. He saw the power of touching with mercy all that he had touched so many 10 billion times before. With fear and aversion. He started to open. And as he started to open, the first thing he came across, of course, was the confusion around the illness and the pain in his body. And he started to open to it for the first time in his life, maybe. And maybe for the first time in his life, he started to meet his pain with loving kindness instead of hatred. You know, if you and I stub our toe or we're hanging a picture and we hit our thumb with a hammer, what do you do with that pain? You send hatred into that pain. You send aversion into that pain. You tell that pain it has no redeeming quality, it's completely X rated and it has got to go. There is no. You are completely unwilling to allow it to stay. Your aversion and hatred at the time when mercy would so feed that which you're calling out for it is the least available. It's our conditioning, there's no blame in it. But if we don't see it, it's kind of one of those weird horrible truths. But it's so horrible it almost makes you laugh. How bizarre that our conditioning should be 180 degrees past off the mark. That when we are in pain we send hatred and aversion into our pain. Just when the openness, the softness, the mercy might meet that pain with a new kindness might give it space to just be there, that space is least available to it. That mercy is least accessible because we've been conditioned again and again. Well, Bill touched something different. He saw how profoundly it wasn't just this pain. It was all the pains in his life, the 10,000 pains that he had never met in his heart that had always caught. And it isn't he because we're never talking about someone else. You were always talking about some aspect of ourselves. He saw that every time he most needed care he had learned to put himself out of his heart and he wasn't going for it anymore. Of course it isn't just that simple. But he was willing and that's the first quality of healing, any kind of healing. His willingness. He was willing to get on with it. He was willing to approach his pain directly. He said, no wonder I don't know anything about my pain. Every time it's arisen I've either taken an instant right or left. I've never taken a mini step a millisecond into it. But that wasn't good enough any longer for him. That was too second hand a life. That was life as an afterthought and he didn't feel he could waste a precious drop. And he started to move into and allowing the healing in and went through a period after the retreat of about six weeks of almost ecstasy, just. He said it's about time I got born. He said, I hope everybody can get born before they die. His period of six weeks were perhaps the happiest in his life. And then the pain came back. Tremendous rectal discomfort, tremendous pain fissures. And the complications could hardly sit where he had been sitting like a Buddha six weeks before. He couldn't, he literally couldn't stand the pressure of sitting on a cushion. Caused a great deal of restlessness and tension and he was so sad. He said the pain is bad enough. He said, but I've lost. I feel kind of like I've lost my birthday. I've lost that space. And then he came to see that this was birth two and that all the pains we have in life are the labor pains of getting born, of letting go of the last moment, of letting go of our suffering, of allowing loving kindness to touch mercy, to touch what's always been touched with hatred and fear. He started to send love into his pain, examining moment to moment the pain, listening to the attitude around the pain, the voice letting the pain talk to him. The Quakers talk about listening to this still, still small voice, the still small voice within. He was listening to the still, small voice within at his anal sphincter. There's no place we can't find God. All us assholes know that. He said he saw shame, a feeling of failure, that he should be so ill so soon. He said as he sent forgiveness into his pain, it dissolved.

That.

Actually, he said, he laughed. He said, the pain in my ass is because I put myself out of my heart. He says I have to take my ass into my heart. He said, I can't exclude anything anymore. I want to read you a letter that Bill wrote soon before he died. This is called an Open Letter to My Brothers and Sisters. It was written in June of 1983. Dear friends, six or seven months ago, I lay in a hospital room convinced that I was going to die. Aids, cancer and pneumonia all seemed to be fighting to claim my life. At that time, I felt very terrified that I might die and go to hell or just not go on at all. But my time had not come. The time since then has been a precious gift in which a great healing has occurred. After months of medical treatment followed by months of holistic treatment and months of spiritual work on myself, I am free. My lover's remarkable support, a spiritual guide, a meditation partner, several meditation retreats, support from wonderful friends, and a lot of work within my own heart has left me at peace for many months. My idea of healing was that of curing my body. I gave it my very best shot. And I am proud of the fact that I was even given several months of relative health and energy at that time. I often expressed my certainty that I could heal my body with my own powers. I still believe these healing powers exist. But as my physical health reached a point where optimism about my health.

Would.

Have had to become self denial, I realized the need to accept my own impending death. I also realized that self compassion meant feeling in my heart that even physical death was not a sign of weakness and failure. I also realized that self compassion meant feeling in my heart that even physical.

Death.

Was not a sign of weakness and failure. This seems to be the ultimate act of self acceptance. I thank God for it. One other thing I've learned is that anytime you know absolutely that you are right, you can be sure you're not. Rightness is just our trying to prove that someone else is wrong. But we often confuse being right with truth. So in these past six months, I have started my own production company which produced a calendar of my own photography. I have worked in the community to heighten awareness of this disease. I have grown closer than ever to my lover, family and friends. I am very proud and thankful for these things. Most importantly, I have come to accept myself exactly as I am. Exactly as I am. This is the greatest gift of all. And so my healing has occurred. Soon my body will drop away from me like a cocoon and my spirit will fly like a butterfly, beautiful and perfect. I don't claim to know where exactly it is that I'm going, but my heart tells me it is filled with light and love. An open heart is a much better, is a much greater blessing then death is a tragedy. An open heart is a much greater blessing than death is a tragedy. Let us all take comfort in this knowledge. Love, Bill.

Bill touches on something in that letter, in talking about pain and opening to pain that Stephen's mentioning. Not only the opening to pain that's physical, but the opening to the psychological pains of dependency, of loss of power, of impotence, of vulnerability, weakness, of not being able to carry out a plan you had. I don't know about you, but I have had some heavy learning to do in learning how to allow myself to need others.

It's very easy for me to be.

Strong and helpful for everybody. Long suffering, wonderful. Nothing's too much. This last week I was taking care of my mother. I'd been up all. My stepmother, I'd been up all night. And this woman, this lpn, who came to take care of my father that day, she said, let me do your laundry. Oh, no, I said, I do my own laundry. And then I saw at that moment, here I was trying to be with Phyllis, who was fiercely independent woman and realized how poignant that Phyllis couldn't allow herself to. To need. I mean, we had this deal that I had an intercom and she would push a buzzer when she'd wake up if she needed to go to the bathroom. And I'd come and carry her or wheel her into the bathroom. And we went through all the stages. At first I'd take her in, close the door so that she could fart in peace and Then as time went on, that fell away till we could all fart in public. And then it came to the point where I could take her pants down. Before that, you just didn't do that in our family. You didn't take each other's pants down. I mean, that just was a no, no. And then it came to the point where I could wipe her. And each one was a moment when we went from no to oh, the hell with it, ok. And then I saw when I said, no, I'll do my laundry in myself, the same damn thing. And I saw, how can I reassure her that it's all right to need another human being if I can't acknowledge that I need other human beings, too? And I said, I'd really love it if you do my laundry. I'm really exhausted. I was just on tour and I got a kidney infection, a bladder infection, which made peeing very painful. And it made me run a high fever. And I was lecturing every other night. I was staying in people's homes, and I found I really needed them to take care of me. And I saw how I would come into the home and here comes Ram Dass. And they've been saving all their problems. You know, they've just been putting them in the cookie jar for when Ram Dass comes. And they were sort of lined up, and I'd walk staggering in, shaking with chills. And it turned out I needed them more than they needed me at that moment.

And.

My allowing them to take care of me answered a lot of the problems that were in that cookie jar, strangely enough. But for me to soften in myself, to the moments when I screw up, to the moments when I forgot something, to the moments when I couldn't be there for somebody the way I thought I was supposed to be there because I just didn't have the emotional resources, or I just overextended myself, or my heart was just too tight to be there the way. And I hate myself for it. And a while back, I realized that if I am going to be a space in which others can acknowledge the fullness of their humanity, I'm going to have to acknowledge the fullness of my own humanity first. So it's much more than physical pain we're dealing with. It's all the psychological pains as well. I have this friend that I've introduced to many of you. His name is Emmanuel. As I've explained to many of you that don't know, Emmanuel is a spook. Emmanuel is not embodied. He speaks through a woman named Pat Rodegaz. And he's delicious. He's a great friend, as I've said, when I introduce him. Most people say, well, I don't know about that. You know, whether they'll even allow him to exist somehow. They say, I don't have prejudices. But when it gets to. To somebody not having a body, they immediately are prejudiced. It's amazing. They don't care if the body's black or blue or red or white or what, but as long as it's a body. Say, my friend doesn't have a body. And, well, I don't know, you know, I know. I mean, there's Emmanuel. He doesn't have a body. And there he is. And he's great. I mean, because it's wonderful to have somebody that doesn't have a body because they kind of lighten up your attachment to your body. I mean, it really makes it all much lighter. Emmanuel has those great lines that I've mentioned. He says, I said to him, what about death, Emanuel? He says, it's absolutely safe. He knows. He's been through it. He knows. He says, it's like taking off a tight shoe. And when I talked to Emmanuel about, you know, and I. I'm repeating this, I said it in marin, but I said to Emmanuel, what's my work on earth? He said, ram Dass, you're in a school. Why don't you try taking the curriculum? So why don't you try being human? It's funny, I'd never thought of that. I was so busy trying to be divine, you know, that I just couldn't be human. And to realize that it was through my humanity that I would recognize the totality of my being, that it was in my incarnation that lay freedom, not in spite of my incarnation. That was a big awakening for me. And suddenly my farting and my weaknesses and my failures and my this and my that, those were all the royal path to enlightenment. They weren't the things you push under the rug to make believe you're holy. It flipped the whole game around just so deliciously. And it made me not only not ashamed of my uniquenesses, I went from being perverse to being eccentric. Now I've gone too far.

That's perverse.

Thanks again for listening to this session with Ram Dass and Steven Levine. Learn more about Steven and his wife Andrea's work@levine talks.com youm can also listen to talks from Steven and Andrea on the Behear Now Network's guest podcast. Subscribe today on Spotify, Apple, or your favorite podcast.