Ep. 270 – Ram Dass and Stephen Levine: Transforming Negative Energy

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Welcome to the Ram Dass here and now podcast. This is episode 270. I'm Jackie Debrinska and I'm so happy to be back with you for this episode. Today we bring you the final of a profound and deeply moving talk given by Ram Dass and Steven Levine. It was in San Francisco during the 1980s at the height of the AIDS cris. And if you haven't already, be sure to check out parts one and two to fully immerse yourself in the wisdom that they're sharing. So in this concluding segment, Ram Dass and Steven answer audience questions that strike at the core of our human experience. Fear and pain and how we show up for one another in times of profound suffering. They explore often how we feel helpless when we're sitting with someone else in pain, believing we must. Believing we must fix it in some way. But as Ram Dass reminds us, our role is not to take away their fear, but to work on ourselves so that we can become an environment for each other so that each of us can find our strength and dignity and reason to meet each moment. And Stephen adds that no one has to die your death for you and you don't have to die your death for anyone else. And I think this doesn't just apply to death. Right? It applies to how we live, how we show up for each other, how we show up for the moment, how we become an environment to meet each other without forcing anyone to be different and allowing us, each other, to awaken in our hearts and come up for air as we need to. So they also reflect on society's collective response to the AIDS epidemic, examining how fear and symbolic overloading shaped perceptions. Something that feels really relevant today as well. Stephen speaks about how there's a difficulty in keeping your heart open around others whose hearts have closed. And. And Ram Dass highlights this art form of transforming negativity into a source of growth and freedom. So again, this isn't just a conversation about AIDS and death and fear. It really feels poignant for right now, again, his teachings always seem to transcend time and space. It's about showing up during these sort of uncertain and unknown and potentially turbulent times. You know, he has this great quote, it's not about them, it's about us. And he also talks about how when we meet our challenges, they become our greatest teachers. Not obstacles, but these guides to freedom. So whether we're grappling with our own pain or fear, or just navigating the challenges of what the Yogis call Kali Yuga, or trying to stay open in the face of it all, I think this episode offers a chance to draw real strength and wisdom from Ram Dass and Stephen and these teachings. So before we dive in, a special thanks to the people who help make this happen. It's an incredible team and we have some incredible sponsors that support us. The first being Magic Mind, which is this zesty little green shot designed sort of to ease mental suffering and boost focus. It's got adaptogens and nootropics and it's just this right balance of calm and clarity. It supports you on your journey to be more present. So visit magicmind.com and use the code Ram Dass for an exclusive discount. And want to mention something Raghu mentioned last time? There's this lovely place in Costa Rica called Reunion. It's on the beach, it's a wellness center and it offers rejuvenative stays and week long retreats. Things like meditation and yoga and holistic practices and farm to table meals and all Sorts of all sorts of loveliness. So as part of this community, you get $250 off any. Just use the code BEHERE250 when you go to reunionexperience.org and speaking of community, if you want to get together and chat about what came up for you during this episode, check out the Ram Dass fellowship. Go to ramdass.org Fellowship. So now we invite you to settle in for this final part of this transformative talk with Ram Dass and Steven Levine. May it inspire you, resource you and remind you of the beauty of this shared human journey. And whatever good may come of it, may it ripple out into our lives and into the lives of everyone everywhere, the benefit of all beings. So here is Ram Dass here and now.

So that this doesn't seem like we know and you don't, because I'm sure we know from the extraordinary group of people here that there's any number of people in this group that could be making this same offering questions that are arising. We have a microphone for the audience. So if you raise your hand, just give them a moment to get to you so everyone can hear. Stand up.

But.

Yeah, and stand up if you're. If you can. But let's open this up now. There's someone in the back over there. We're going to do a healing meditation.

Yeah.

Thank you. Before we.

She's a shill.

We hired her to ask. We'll try to do that.

Yes.

Thank you.

Here's a question. It's okay.

Just.

Just stand up and say it. We'll repeat it. I just wanted to know that. I've been dealing with a lot of scared feelings and around someone who's ill, who's very ill. And I feel fine with the pain. You know, all the things you said about pain, I feel fine with. But I still have this feeling of scared of fear. And I'm not sure where that's coming from.

And I wonder whether you would address that.

Repeat the question. I'm feeling scared. I'm dealing with somebody who's very ill. And it's not just the pain. That's something else that I'm feeling scared about. Would you address that? Stephen.

When you stub your toe, what's your response when you heard we were speaking about that a moment ago? You say there's no fear, but probably around your pain there is some fear. I mean, that's natural. We've really been taught to be afraid of our pain. And much of the conditioning that we meet when we're in pain Is people wincing, people touching our pain with fear. It's a real learning process. It's not so one can understand it. But as we all know, we all understand so much. Understanding is not enough. It's just the beginning. Working with the small pains in your body, they will start to be like a crystal ball field. And as you look into the pains, you're not going to be able to look into the broken arm, but you can look at because it'll be too big, you won't be able to get much space around it. But the stubbed toe, the hip, elbow, the minor burn, the scrapes, abrasions, cuts, we're always, you know, our bodies are always getting bumped around in something. To just watch that and sensation in general, to just watch how you may be responding to it. That's one level of it. The other thing is sometimes we feel so helpless when someone's in pain. And that helplessness makes us feel so out of control that fear arises.

In many ways.

It's easier to be the person in pain than the loved one standing next to the bed. Because the person in pain, their path is clear. Stay with the pain, relate to the pain. The person standing empty handed next to the bed may be in psychological agony, wanting so to alleviate pain from a loved one and may feel very helpless and very groundless. And naturally fear arises in that state. Don't be afraid of the fear. Big surprise, this fear. One of the things that is so amazing is how long are we going to be surprised by the same old thing? We know there's fear. We know that we hardly need our pain, that we usually try to escape it. No surprise if fear arises.

Behind you. Oh, you are here.

Okay.

Yeah. Want to stand when you, one of you. Yeah, That's, that's going on like they, they're picking up here.

I know.

I also had to think about how. Okay, what I've noticed in being with someone who is in the process of dying.

Is, I mean, it's nice to be.

Able to say don't be afraid. You know, it's just a surprise.

Right.

And.

What I am met with consistently.

Is I don't know.

You know, and.

I don't know either how to handle the fear. I mean, I can handle my own fear as it comes up the best I can.

But how to be with another person with their fear is something that's really difficult for me.

And if you can speak more to.

That other than it's just a surprise, you know, that would be helpful for me.

Question is how to be with another person who is afraid. Take a quick crack at it. We'll just keep going back and forth. I feel that everything that I have done on myself. Is what I offer to every human being I meet. And to the extent that I have confronted things that frighten me and turned around and looked at them. Rather than running away and seeing that they are the creations of my mind in large part fears of embarrassment, of shame, of humiliating, you know, all those kind of fears and fears of pain and fears of things. I can be an environment for another person which takes the fear and just allows it. Not that I can take it away from them. I think that what burns people out in working with an another person. Is that they keep trying to take something away from them or change them or do something to them. And I think that you've got to allow that. That person is afraid. That's the way it is. That person is afraid. If you can bring to that environment, that situation, the environment of your mind that allows it. That doesn't get reactive against the fear by doing something, that's the tendency I got to do something, something about it. But if you cannot get reactive that way. And just be there with the person in their fear, that is the optimum environment in which they can explore the fear for themselves. You can't do it to them, but you can create an environment in which another person can do it for themselves. And that's a much relieving role for a person that is with somebody that is suffering or frightened. Because one of the things that destroys us really is the fear feeling that we're supposed to do something about somebody's pain or fear or something like that. And since you really don't know unless you have the God eye of full awareness. What function that pain or fear has for the person. You can't even know that it should go away just at the moment it does. I mean, I've watched people that were in very, very deep pain. And I wanted to take their pain away and couldn't. And then a little while later, I saw how that pain shredded away parts of their defenses. And allowed a light to come out of them that even awed them in terms of their own beauty. And had I been successful in taking away their everything. I mean, it's the way parents want to protect their children from everything. But yet, when you and I look at our lives, Wasn't it a lot of the suffering and a lot of the pains and all that that tempered us and that made us the Mensches, the full beings that we end up being. And whether we would begrudge ourselves all the knocks of our own childhood. So that's my.

Sounds right to me.

Questions. Every answer is, you know, is only part of an answer. And if you recognize that we're really talking to ourself here, that somebody's asking the questions and somebody's answering them, but it's all of our hearts and minds just working together to explore. So in that spirit, let's go on. Yeah.

I'm having a little difficulty with my throat chakra. It feels like the Los Angeles freeway is rushing through there. I have felt the most comfortable that I have been able to feel this afternoon with the experience that I'm going through. And I've been aware since my diagnosis and prognosis, etcetera, that this was a rare opportunity for perhaps for me to rejoin the human race and maybe the universe. And I have had a definite sense of rebirthing through my personal pain and disappointment. My question is, what single what can I do as a person who is experiencing his birth and death almost simultaneously? What can I do for my brothers who see this as an indictment, a judgment or quote, a death sentence?

That's a hard question to repeat. He said, in effect, since his diagnosis, he has felt rebirth and birth and death coming together for him and that he feels that through. Through this process, he is rejoining the human race.

And.

He wonders how he can help his. Brothers who are in a similar situation, who are seeing their predicament as one, one of indictment of failure and of, quote, a death sentence.

I don't think that the answer to your question is in doing. It's in being. And, you know, because the place that's opening is that place. You can never convince anyone else of anything that intense, that essential, that long condition. But if you be it, that which is it within them will be drawn. They will have trust not in your words, but in your being. It's like the truth. You can't, in a sense, know the truth. You can only be it. Knowing is too superficial. The doing would be too superficial. The being as is in this expansion says more than any words. Now, that's frustrating because you want to help. But remember how frustrating it is when somebody tries to help you and you don't want to. One of the questions we're most asked is by loved ones of people who are dying. And they say, how can I get my loved one out of denial? Say, why would you want to get them out of denial? Why would you take away their dignity? No one has to die. Your Death for you. And you don't have to die your death for anyone else.

I think every one of us has to keep learning that over and over again. That desire which is just rooted again, wanting to take away somebody's confusion, pain, suffering, ignorance because you love them so much. I mean, I've been quote, in the dying business for about 10, 15 years now. And here I'm dealing with an 87 year old father and my stepmother and all these people around me and I feel like they should want to know what I have to teach. But my father is in the least bit interested. And at first it used to, I used to try to figure out ploys that I could sneak it in on it. You know, I'd say, what do you see when you look at the clouds? You know, I try all this kind of stuff. So funny. He knew it, I knew it. You know, he just puts up with it. It's easier for me to appreciate because now, because I really do understand that everybody has a unique incarnation and everybody has unique work to do. And you're experiencing your birth and death at this moment coming together is your work. And for you to assume it's somebody else's work, maybe they have to think it's a death sentence and go on with that for quite a while. It really is. You begin to see that it's kind of presumptuous to think that you should have them think the way you think. I mean, it's hard because you're finally seeing the light and you want everybody to see the light. And those are the kind of people they put in prison. You know, I see the light, you're going to see the light. If I have to, you know, I'm gonna hit you until you see the light and you finally realize that you see the light and you be the light and then whoever's ready, it'll rub off. And that's what you offer. You just hang out with them.

I just wanted to add one thing Ram Dass was saying about trying to have his father understand. I have three children. I wanted my children to understand, to be Dharmic. My daughter's 16 years old, 17 years old. She's been around this her whole life. As soon as I go into what would be called the lecture material, my daughter turns to me and says, put it on tape. You can't get away with anything in this game. The institution was very clean.

At least my father doesn't talk. That thing about time is really a crucial issue here that I think we should keep bringing up until we're comfortable with it because I guess. I have, because I am steeped in traditions that involve reincarnation and involve karma and sanskaras and sankaras and all these ideas about how one works in an incarnation. I have a sense of structure and design in incarnations, and that an incarnation lasts not a whit longer or a width shorter than it's supposed to. Then you. And this is putting it very far out. Then you've designed it to last, that each individual has designed it to last. And this is far out for most Western minds to even grapple with. And I suspect that this audience grapples with it a lot and have different degrees of belief or faith or fascination or disregard of these ideas. But from. In talking with Emmanuel, I get really the sense that we, when we're looking at it from Earth, feel that duration is very critical when it's looked at from outside of time. There is a certain lesson that we've designed our incarnation to present us with. And that lesson, when it's learned, that's the end of the round. And it doesn't have to do with how long is better. Like, my father at the moment is 87, and I'm sure he doesn't know what he's doing alive anymore now in the world. That's. Isn't it wonderful? He's lived to 87. The guy gets up, I mean, each day it's the toilet, it's the food, it's sitting in the chair, it's going back to bed. He's inside. He doesn't know. He's not sitting, saying, wow, what a wonderful life. Life, thank God I've lived. Maybe I'll live to be the age of my grandmother, who was 106. He's just going on because you go on, because you go on. And that's his karma. But I have a real sense of. And this is. People say, well, you're Pollyanna Ish. You're hiding your head in the sand, that there is a rightness. I remember talking once with Trungpa Rinpoche, who's a kind of a rascally Tibetan lama that some of you, you may have heard of. And we were talking about abortion. And he said, you've got to realize that it takes three awarenesses, a conspiracy of three awarenesses for the abortion to occur. And it involves all of them. It's not like somebody does it to somebody else. And that if it isn't for that being to just go and become a fetus and then leave and have completed that round by doing that, nothing the parents will do is going to work or their minds are going to be turned at the last moment, because the sum result is the collaboration of all those awarenesses or all those souls in Christianity that are involved now. It takes a lot to make that leap of faith, if you will. For me, it is so ingrained, it isn't even a question anymore. And what it's done is. It's changed my understanding about age because to me, if you end up in the fourth grade and you get out halfway through and you put in the fifth grade, and everybody in the fourth grade says, oh, isn't it too bad she never finished the fourth grade? I mean, that's roughly the thing. If you think the fourth grade always goes from September till June, maybe you're bright enough, you finished in a month. I mean, I'm being a little facetious, but at the same moment, I'm not really that this is a key issue of whether or not somebody dies too young and too young is a statement of one's attachment to a model of what you think life experiences should be about. And that's the model that's causing the suffering. Because those of you that have been out of time and space for a moment, whether you did it through through sex or through drugs or through whatever, or through meditation, you know that a moment out of time and space is enough in Life. And the two of them aren't any better than one of them, and 100 of them aren't better than two of them. That it is. And it has nothing to do with collecting in numbers. The whole game of numbers and collecting is such a Western model of more is better, more is best, so smoke more. And really, enough is enough, it turns out. And it's really a flip of consciousness that allows a possibility for you to take something that is constantly making you unhappy. Oh, I'll never know age. Like, I don't have any children. He's got three kids. I love his kids. I don't have any kids. I love kids, but I don't have any kids. It hasn't been in the way of things that I have had children. I could sit and be obsessed with not having children for the rest of my life, but that's the way the karmic ball bounces, if you will. I mean, I used to when I was going bald, I was busy combing my hair over my, you know, finally, you're bald. That's the way it is, you know, not, you're bald, I'm bald.

You know, The Poet XJ Kennedy, seeing I'm not sure who it was, whether it was a relative or a dear friend, had a child who died within a few months after birth. He talked about the child coming into life, this extraordinary family gathering around the birth of a child, this immense growth and unity and. And new feelings and deeper feelings and new truths and subtler touchings. And then the child dies. And he writes a poem about the child dying, living only two months. He ends the poem with the lines and still I marvel that so much could stay so long in so little. On his back, he says, and making light of mountain, loads of logic. I marvel that so much could stay so long and so little.

I've read this aloud many times and it's even in some books, but I think it's appropriate to read. Stephen Anita letter Is that all right? Steven Anita were a couple in the Northwest and their daughter, their 11 year old daughter Rachel went to play tennis with her girlfriend from the synagogue and she was they were both raped and murdered. And we were called and I sat down to write them a letter. And how do you write a letter to parents that are dealing with that? And it really pushed me into the deeper parts of my being. Now everything here is from one place of looking, but I'd like to share it with you anyway. Steve and Anita Rachel finished her brief work on earth and left the stage in a man manner that leaves those of us left behind with a cry of agony in our hearts as the fragile thread of our faith is dealt with so violently. Is anyone strong enough to stay conscious through such teachings as you are receiving? Probably very few. And even they would only have a whisper of equanimity and spacious peace midst the screaming trumpets of their rage, grief, horror and desolation. I cannot assuage your pain with any words. Nor should I. For your pain is Rachel's legacy to you. Not that she or I would inflict such pain by choice. But there it is, and it must burn its purifying way to completion. You may emerge from this ordeal more dead than alive. And then you can understand why the greatest saints, for whom every human being is their child, shoulder the unbearable pain and are called the living dead. For something within you dies when you bear the unbearable. And it is only in that dark night of the soul that you are prepared to see as God sees and to love as God loves. Now is the time to let your grief find expression, no false strength. Now is the time to sit quietly and speak to Rachel and thank her for being with you these few years. And encourage her to go on with her work, knowing that you, you will grow in compassion and wisdom from this experience in my heart, I know that you and she will meet again and again and recognize the many ways in which you have known each other. And when you meet, you will, in a flash, know what now it is not given to you to know why this had to be be the way it was. Your rational minds can never understand what has happened. But your hearts, if you can keep them open to God, will find their own intuitive way. Rachel came through you to do her work on earth, which included her manner of death. Now her soul is free and the love that you can share with her is invulnerable to the winds of changing time and space. In that deep love, include me too.

Questions.

You. Since this teaching is about aids, and since I have aids. Excuse me, could you speak a little louder? Since this teaching is about aids, and since I have aids, I wondered if you could give me some help in trying to understand what is happening around me with society's reaction to me and my disease. It is. Every once in a while I think I can keep up with what's going on and understand why people are reacting to me the way they are. And then something happens and I lose it again and I'm confused. That's my question.

Got it.

He said that he has aids, and he wonders whether we can reflect a little bit about how society is reacting to aids. Because he thinks at one moment he's just figured out how they're reacting and then something happens that confuses him and throws them off. Does that reflect?

Of course, this is the question in the mind and heart. We all share a lot of people's question. In the early part of the century, as many, many of you may know, there was a huge influenza epidemic that wiped out hundreds of thousands of people, mainly children, older people, people whose immune systems were not really strong. It may have been. It was several hundred thousand, as I recall. My father's 87 years, 86 years old, so he was alive at that time. And I asked him, I said, what was it the plague? What was it like to be in cities? He was in Boston at the time when there was a plague, when there was influenza killer. Influenza. He said he remembers getting on the trolley car and everybody on the trolley car had their handkerchiefs over their face. Everybody looked like bandits. Everywhere you went, where people were, where it was public, people had handkerchiefs over there. Everybody was masking themselves, themselves against death. Everybody was thinking that somehow they could filter out the moment that somehow they could protect themselves. And he said not only were they covered, but they didn't talk and they didn't touch. And he said it was the eeriest feeling. It was the feeling like everybody was already dead. He said it was like the land of the dead trying to be alive. You're not surprised that people touch your pain with fear. It's sad, but we're really not surprised. We've seen so much of it, and people can only take incremental steps, opening to your pain. And it may be that they open and open out into some sense of showing space for you to be just as you are. But then fear arises and they close. It's a teaching for you because it's not them only. It never is them, only them is an aspect of us. To watch how you do that, to watch how you may open to them when they've opened to you. And as soon as they close, you close. Or do you stay open after they've closed? It's hard to keep your heart open when someone's touching you with fear, Will they're touched with you. I mean, the experience isn't so different. They're afraid and their hearts are closing. If you can touch them with forgiveness, not force it because you don't owe them anything. But for you to give you space to be as you are, if you can use a quality like forgiveness so that it doesn't close your heart when they're. You've got better work to do. You're in grad school, you don't have time to fight around when you notice your heart close. It's not their heart that's the problem. When you notice you're afraid, watch if you can touch your fear with just a millisecond more forgiveness and compassion so that your path is open. Everybody has to walk their own path. And it's not a surprise that people open and close to us. As moods change. If you want them to be different, you'll want you to be different. And then you'll find it very difficult to make room in your heart for yourself.

It's hard.

It's the hardest work you'll ever do. What else are you going to do?

You. There is so much symbolic overloading to AIDS at this moment. Because not only is is it vulnerability a symbol of our vulnerability to the forces of death, but it's also.

Seen.

As a way of a reaction by the universe to the increasing way we've been dealing with our sexual freedom and our exploration in the past 20, 30 years. And people who have come out to explore their sexuality. And this is heterosexual and homosexual, it doesn't matter, have come out carrying with them a lot of the puritanical values lurking the superego hanging in there. And they have waited for the condemnation, they've waited for the punishment. And a lot of people, whether they are having AIDS or whether they are just reacting to others that have aids, are in part reacting to the symbology of that in terms of their own desires, of the identification with their own desires and the allowing of their own desires to find expression. It's a very, very far out one. I mean, we haven't yet gotten sophisticated enough yet so that our greed we see indicted by the poverty in third world countries. I mean, that's another level of the game. But we are seeing how our sexual destination desire, we're feeling that as the AIDS as an indictment. And this is a large, broad, widely spread cultural phenomenon in the sense of. And you're being the symbolic recipient of that guilt and that fear and all of that stuff. And what can you have for people that are caught in that kind of, if you will, superego, that kind of punishing, judgmental thing? What can you finally have but compassion? And it's tough when you're the symbolic representative. I found out that I remember I was Elizabeth Kubleras and I exchanged retreats. She came to one of my retreats with Stephen. Stephen and I did. And then I went to one of her retreats. And at her retreat there was this, this nurse, 28 year old nurse, and she had had 92 operations, she had three or four kids, she was 28 or nine years old. And she described her life, this situation. She'd had cancer since she was 14 years old or something like. And after she described it, she said, if you came to see a person like that, what would you feel? And then Elizabeth stood up at the blackboard and wrote what people's reactions were. And they said, I'd feel pity, I'd feel anger, I'd feel the injustice of it, I'd feel anger at God and on and on and on. When the list came down, the nurse said, you know, it's interesting all of you were so busy reacting to the symbolic value of my being a 28 year old nurse with three children who'd had 92 operations. Nobody was responding to me. She said, that's what I experienced when I was in the hospital. My symbolic value was so powerful that nobody could get through it. Nobody could recognize me as a being in here. And I think those of us that Work with people that are ill or those of us that are ill have got to see how much we are swept away by the symbology of it all and how much we keep digging behind. Because if somebody comes up to me and says, you know, Ram Dass, I think you're a phony. You know, my ego, and there's a reactiveness in it. And then a moment later, something else happens, and my heart opens. And I think, gee, what a poor person that is to be in a world where they think I'm a phony because I'm not a phony. I am what I am. And my heart opens, and it's as if that action didn't get a reaction and that created a spirit where if that person is ready to let go of that thing, I gave them the space to do it in. While if I said. When they said, you're a phony, I said, what do you mean I'm a phony? I'm not a phony. You know, whatever you do in reaction, all I do is keep feeding the whole thing on and on and on. So in terms of your work on yourself, these people are all coming as what in the Hindu tradition are called UPA gurus. They're coming as people along the way to give you little teachings. Just as you think you're getting conscious and free and spacious, somebody comes along and says, you got aids. Get away from me. And you go like that. Good. There's another one. See? Now, as long as you're trying just to be high and happy, those people are a drag. When you want to get free, then you're looking for your own stash of attachment. And if somebody can show you where, you can freak. Thank you. It's like Shiva comes and tickles you, or Kali comes and whispers in your ear, oh, you're pretty cool, huh? Well, try this one. Can you hear what I'm saying? It's far out to flick it around and take that kind of accusatory. All that negative stuff that comes at you and turn it around and use it for your own growth. That's what I'm saying. When you can use this stuff for your own growth, not only don't you burn out, but you feed on the energy. I remember giving a lecture in Philadelphia. Philadelphia, Washington. And it turned out the cathedral I was speaking in was right next to the fire station. And it was a Saturday night. And every 20 minutes or so, all the fire engines went out. And we'd be in the middle of the meditation, and suddenly. And they were really loud I mean, I guess they don't have fires on Sunday morning, but Saturday night they had a lot of fires. And everybody would get very irritated. And I said, what are you getting irritated about? That's free energy the city's giving you. Use it taking up your chakras. Get high off it. I mean, there's an art form to learning how to flip negative energy, and there's plenty of it in the game you and I are all involved in at this moment. And it's inside ourselves and it's in each other. And the question is how quickly we can identify it. The minute you can notice it, you start to get space. The minute you get space, you can start to transform it, and you can transform that negative energy into something through which you can grow. 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.