Ep. 305 – Using A Relationship to Awaken

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The basic social institution is the individual human heart. That's the only one through which you will hear the clear message. You won't hear it from the government. You won't hear it from the church. You won't hear it from wise teachers. You will ultimately only hear it from inside your own heart. And in fact, you won't hear it. You will merely slowly become it.

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Hey everyone, it's Ram Dass Here and Now podcast. I'm Raghu Marcus and I'm really happy to announce and invite you to join into this celebration of the 10th anniversary of Be Here Now Network. And what a milestone. And we never thought it would evolve to where it has now with so many people tuning in. And it's become a real hub of Love Serve Remember Foundation and ramdas.org. I talked to Ram Dass when we were going to do this and reminded him, do the network all those years ago. And I reminded him, you were going to do a radio show before you had the stroke. And of course, that couldn't happen. But look, here we are with this beautiful network, with a bunch of your old friends from Alan Watts to Krishnas to Jack Kornfield and on. So he really appreciated that. And one of the things that we want to do, we want to ask, we're going to ask you to join in this celebration. We're going to have different events and so on. Our mission at Love Serve Remember is to preserve and continue the teachings of Ram Dass and all of the family of teachers that are on this network. And one of the things that we thought would be perfectly in line with that mission is to restore all of the audio. So this is a big moment for us. As I said, we had no idea of what would happen with this network. We've had a bunch of really hardworking people to help make this happen. So everybody, you can go to Be Here Now Network, and you can see everything that we're trying to accomplish and certainly help support us. You know, it's over all these years, these 10 years, believe it or not, throughout the whole network, we have 50 million listens. That's incredible. We're not talking Joe Rogan. You know, we're talking spirituality. So, beherenownetwork.com/10years. And thanks for your support. So, more news to come on that one. Meanwhile, this talk from Ram Dass, it's a very classic talk. It's also the conclusion of a talk that we put into a podcast. It was episode 304, The Wisdom of the Universe. This one, this talk, this second part of this talk, he talks, he dives into his work with death and dying, and he reads this letter, a letter to Rachel, which is a very famous letter. It's something we send out to anybody who sends us, you know, to the foundation, something about how can you help, how can Ram Dass help What did he have to say about loss? I mean, this was a tremendous loss of a young girl and parents. This letter responded to that from Ram Dass. Now, it's painful, obviously. It's painful for anybody just even hearing this. So I urge you to take that into account. He also talks about relationship. And I really, you know, this is something that all of us have on a day-to-day basis. And it's part of using it. Ram Dass always refers to using relationships as a vehicle for awakening. And I, you know, there isn't any one of us that doesn't have that, which is the perfect conditions for growing. And Ram Dass wrote a book about that in general called Grist for the Mill. There isn't anything that you can't use to help awaken. And the biggest thing that Ram Dass gave to everybody and continues through all of the videos and talks and books and everything else that we continue to explore is the human heart. And the basic social institution is the human heart. This is again, a very, very classic, well, second part of a classic talk. It's from Los Angeles in 1980. So anyhow, let's just listen and watch Ram Dass here and now, and we'll see you next time.

Even if we touch a moment, we will forget. In a moment from now, or a moment after that, we will back— be back busy being who we think we are. But then after a little while, we will remember again, and then we will forget, and then we will remember, and then we will forget, and then we will remember. And on it will go, because once you've started to awaken, you can't quite get back to sleep, but you're not yet ready to get up. And you and I are lying there, half in the dream world and half out, trying to hold on to the receding dream No, it's still real. I can get one more rush out of that trip. I mean, I really try. I really try to get rushes out of life. But to get a real rush out of life, you've got to get lost. And it's really hard to get as lost. Several years ago, I was giving a lecture in Berkeley and someone called. This is the wrong state to tell this story. Someone called and told me that Jerry Brown was coming to see me at the motel. And I thought, far out, governor is coming to see me in my motel room. I thought I ought to be able to get some mileage off this. And so I said, I thought, the governor is coming to see me in my motel room. I mean, I thought of telling my father, hey, Dad, the governor came to see me. And I mean, I was milking— I was trying to find a way I could get a rush off this thing. And by the time he knocked at the door, I opened the door and I was the first thing I said to him, you know, it didn't work at all. I couldn't get a rush off you, which later turned out to be true. You try to hold on to just milk it for one more thing. Last week I went inner tube whitewater river rafting down the Rio Grande River, and the tide is getting a little low, so the rocks are getting a little close to the surface and your behind is right in the in the tube, you know, your legs are hanging over one end and you're staring with the other. And everybody else on the river is in boats with helmets and a serious look and emergency provisions. And they've been trained to take on this river, see, and they're there's no room for joy because this is serious business. We've got to survive. And then suddenly this old bald guy goes by on a rubber tube. I mean, I really felt— I felt like I was kind of blowing their scene, you know? I mean, I really felt guilty about it. I felt I should look like frightened or in pain or something. But I was going, Om Shri Ram, Jai Ram, Jai Jai Ram. I just wanted to remember to say Ram when I died, that's all. And I figured the likelihood was higher now, so it would be better to remember it now. You know, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram. And, you know, you milk it. You think somebody says, you're not going to go down the river on an inner tube. They don't say at your age, they just say you're not going to go down the river in a minute. So because you'd say that to anybody, because that's an idiotic thing to do. And I was stoned and I said, sure, I'm going to do that. We put the tubes in and I climbed in and went and I thought, well, now he— and my guide said to me, now the nice thing about this particular run is you won't have any time to worry because it starts immediately. You're not going to have time to learn. You're immediately going to be cast out. I mean, you may think you're just high on the beach, about to have a good time. That's who you think you are now. But the minute you're in the river, in about 30 seconds, it's going to be some other world for you. You ready? Okay, here we go. And I went and we— and suddenly you're being swirled around and you're trying to figure it all out. And in the midst of all that, I thought, right. And so this is this one. So Now, it's interesting when you think that thought that what you call an up-level or something that isn't caught in the dance, there's a place where you feel gypped, you know, because you really wanted to get the rush. Oh, I'm scared, you know, but you can't quite do it, you know, because you know too much. Because you don't care enough, because you trust it all. And it's the beginning of what? That dark night of the soul where you start to die to physical rewards, this other kind of reward, worldly stuff. But you haven't yet been born the other way, so you still want it. I mean, I still want it, but it just keeps turning up nothing. It's like Thurber's Wicked Duke in The 13 Clocks, in which the prince ransoms the princess from the wicked duke by giving him some jewels that this woman has provided by crying aloud. Crying, crying. A semi-precious jewel. And the duke is greedy and he's got his jewels in his cask. 'Cause dukes have casks and the prince runs off with the princess and the duke opens the cask and reaches down to enjoy his greed. And he comes up and they've all turned back into water. And he says, what's this? Hey, hey. And that's what happens. What's this? It all turned back into itself. It all starts to turn up nothing. And to the extent that you want to hold on to a romanticized image of yourself and life, this is a very painful moment because the melodrama isn't captivating enough. And you start to see through the set and you see it's just a set. That is the moment when either you freak and you rush back into more and more grabbing with the idea that if I got more of it, somehow it'll happen because more is better. Or you get to the point where you realize that more is never going to be enough. And that is the moment where if you can open at that moment instead of closing out of fear and open into— is nothing all totally boring, hopeless, empty, Eh, and here we are. Now what? Ah, new moment. Hey, look, I am making all things new. That's because you allow it each moment. The nice thing about working with somebody that's dying is all the models of who they think they are are slowly, one by one, collapsing. And if you cannot get caught in their drama, you have the opportunity of being one of those mirrors that helps free that person from suffering. Because the only reason they're suffering is because they think they're dying, which turns out to be just another storyline. But in order to do that, you can't be captivated by somebody else's melodrama. And the only thing that will captivate you by somebody else's melodrama is your own attachments that are symbiotic, that fit in with their drama. If you're afraid of dying, then they got you. I mean, in the first time, they can't go to the toilet by themselves, and then they can't dress, they can't feed themselves. Well, you can't feed yourself. How quickly can you let go into being somebody who can't feed yourself instead of saying, I used to be able to feed myself? How about looking in the closet and seeing all the clothes you'll never wear again? My friend who's 23 years old, he's got a huge tumor. And so no girls want to make love to somebody with a huge draining tumor. Advanced Hodgkin's disease. What's going to be my reaction with him? Am I going to feel sorry for him? Poor kid. He's 23. He hasn't really had the joys of life. It's a hard one not to, isn't it? Can I love him enough to work on myself hard enough to be clear enough to get not lost in the drama, because how do I know what that's all about? I don't. I merely have the projections of my own desires to deal with. And he and I have sat facing each other at different levels of consciousness and just gotten clearer and clearer until I see him as another being just like me. And he's living it out this way. Or dying it out this way, as the case may be. And I can meet him as the being behind the body with the tumor. And suddenly when we're together, there's no more fear, there's no more heaviness, there's no more self-pity, there's no more anger, there's no more any of that stuff. We're just here saying, isn't this one well now, as this happens, what do we do now? A new moment. Recently in Ashland, Oregon, a 12-year-old girl was sexually assaulted and murdered. Her parents, who had two other children, 6 and 3— the girl was 11 or 12. Her name was Rachel. And I was asked to write a letter to them because they had listened to tapes and read some of the books and felt close to me. And I thought, what chutzpah? How can I write to family who is experiencing this kind of loss? Imagine having your daughter raped and murdered when she goes off to play tennis with her friend who is also raped and murdered. And I found that that situation pulled from me much more than I could generally give in a moment, because the situation demanded of me that I go to my deepest being to find a response. Not just, dear Steve and Anita, I'm terribly sorry to hear of your loss, and I want you to know I'm with you in love. And That's fine. Here's the letter I wrote. Steve and Anita, Rachel finished her brief work on Earth and left the stage in a 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 amidst 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 will understand why the greatest saints, for whom every human being is their child, shoulder the unbearable pain of it all and are sometimes referred to as 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 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 the way it was. Your rational minds can never understand what has happened, but your heart, if you can keep it open to God, will find its own intuitive way Rachel came through you to do her work on Earth, which included her manner of death. Now her soul is more 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. Who you and I are was neither born nor will it die. When you and I have finished whatever it is we do in this incarnation, We will be removed from the stage by the big hook that comes out from the side. And it may be that you will die in an automobile accident or in your bed at old age, or as the result of violence. It's merely more of the stuff of a human incarnation. How do you deal as such a being with relationships, with politics? You listen. You listen like Milarepa listens outside of his cave. And while you're busy listening, action is coming out of you. But you don't identify with being the actor. You're busy listening. You're not even busy listening. You're busy hearing. Different. You're busy hearing. You're just hearing. And out of you is coming the action. It's like the difference between innocence and guile. Guile is ego. It's self-conscious action. Innocence is harmony. It's in-tuneness. It's listening. It's in the flow. Death is not an enemy. Things die. Things are born. It's not an enemy. It's only an enemy of who you think you are. You can work full time for healing as the Well-Being Center, but remember that what healing is, is healing of beings out of suffering. And the suffering at the final level is created by attachment to the illusion of your own separateness. And maybe in the course of that healing, you will drop your body and maybe you won't. And it's just more scenario. Which drama is heady enough to suck you in? Death, pestilence, starvation, political unrest, authoritarian rule, loss of civil liberties, change of economic conditions. Which one's going to get you? I mean, I'm very clear and conscious and I love everybody, but Jesus, these taxes. I mean, I often say to an audience, maybe the next time you and I meet, we will meet under a bridge sharing some rotten food out of a rusty can. And after we get over the horror of it all, I'll say to you, are you here? I'm here. Far out. Imagine meeting here. Well, things have certainly changed. Maybe we'll have to say it through our gas masks. Who knows? Or underground. I mean, it really may get messy. Can you do everything you can within whatever your incarnation is to keep it beautiful, make it more compassionate, more loving, more harmonious, more politically conscious, and at the same moment not be attached to the outcome? Don't get caught in the position of Job, who is constantly saying to God, why did you screw up? I mean, if I were God, I certainly wouldn't have made this stuff. Until you understand the trip, what are you so busy judging it for? I mean, I'm in a relationship and the person can be totally obnoxious. And I can be busy saying, why are you so obnoxious? Or I can see the essence of obnoxiousness. Ah, obnoxious. See, see. In one case, I'm trying to manipulate the universe always to make it the way I think it ought to be. If you're going to be my friend, I wish you'd be like this. Far out. Because the teaching from my guru was very simply, you don't have to change anybody, you just love them. I mean, if I don't buy your obnoxiousness, the only person that's left with the obnoxiousness is you. And I feel tremendous compassion that you have to live in an obnoxious world. And I guess when you get tired of it, you'll let it go. I've been living in an obnoxious world for years, and I'm just learning how to come out for air. But by sitting around saying you're obnoxious, I'm not going to get you out of your obnoxious world. That's very clear because you will just respond in an obnoxious fashion. Hmm. You begin to see how sticky your mind is, how long you hold on before you let go. Hey, you want to make love? See, So you make the move. This is horrible. I want to make it really horrible. You make the move and the partner pulls back. Oh, right in the gut. Hey, hey. Now the horniness has started in. So already you don't care. Now you push harder. You don't care anything about the consciousness of the other being any longer. You just want what you want. And you say, well, it's okay because I want it. I'm being honest. I want it. It's a good one. Honest expression of feelings and desires. Now, if you can just see your predicament, as long as you are totally identified with being one versus the other, the other person's him or her or an object, then you're identified with what you want. The minute you have done some work on your consciousness so that there is— when you're in a relationship, there is simultaneously the two of you. And there is also the one of you, and the one of you is enjoying the dance of the two of you. So you are both simultaneously honoring your two-ness and your oneness. To honor your oneness, you have to expand into the two. So you are feeling both the lust and the turned-off-ness. And to the extent that you are quiet enough and are not identifying with any part of the drama, your action must come out of the totality of that moment. And it is quite different for two beings to make love where there is only one awareness. Than if each awareness is locked into its separate desire system. Because making love is not relationship in the separate sense only. It is also reveling in the dance that comes from the oneness. All sex doesn't come out of lust. Some of you may not have known that because of early training. Sometimes sex just comes out of a harmonious the way it is of the fact that humans do yearn for intimacy and that intimacy is a vehicle for opening the heart more and more deeply. And that for most of us, the heart is a very, very royal road through to higher consciousness. Some of us can use the Zen crispness of the koan in the mind beating the mind to go beyond. Some of us will use the heart to fall in love with the beloved and then see the beloved everywhere and then keep merging into the beloved, into union, until the whole world is a sexual, sensual, flowing, merging, whispering, two, then one, then two, then one, pulsating as if with each breath. That's the penultimate of bhakti or devotional yoga, coming to union through the heart. When you want to become who you truly are badly enough, there is no way you cannot use everything in your life as a vehicle for awakening. You can use your meditations, you can use your pranayama, you can use your pilgrimages. That's all easy. How about using parking tickets? How about using economic— getting ripped off? How about using Ronald Reagan as president? How about using on and on and on. How are you going to use all this stuff? How are you going to use pollution? Are you going to use it all or are you going to say, oh no, that's too much? God, people come to me and say, oh, I can get so high out in the country. I'm sure I couldn't live in New York City or L.A. And I've come to get teachings from you. What should I do? Go live in L.A. It's a hot fire. You wanted a hot fire. Do you want to get purified or you just want to wallow? Use it all. Use the real heavy stuff that gets you down. Use it. Don't waste it. Somebody that really wants to awaken— the only reason you'd enter into a relationship other than because of a karmic necessity, like parents or children or a given like an employer at a certain moment, but voluntary relationships you would only enter into as a vehicle for awakening. It would all be a vehicle, but this would be an intentional act. And can you imagine what it's like for two or more people to be gathered together in order to awaken? And what dance do they do? Well, we'll call it whatever we want. Should we call it a family, an ashram, monastery, spiritual community? It doesn't matter. Sometimes when you get high and you look into another person's face, you look into their eyes, their face keeps changing and changing and changing, and you see them turn into demons and devas and all the different faces of the universe. And so it is with anybody that you're in a relationship with, because we are all, all things. That's what Jung was talking about in the collective unconscious. And how much are you ready to allow another human being to be who they need to be karmically without turning off your heart because they don't fulfill your expectations of how you think it ought to be if you were God? How much can you just allow another human being to be who they are? You know, it's funny, you go out in the woods and you see two pine trees and one is sort of bent and the other is straight, and one has got some brown on the tips of its needles and the other doesn't. And One's got a little gnarled and you just look at them as two pine trees and you sort of allow them both to be. You don't say, you're a real second-rate pine tree. No. Somehow with humans, though, it's constant judging. You know, it's constant judging. How much more exciting and fun in life to be a connoisseur than a judge, to be an appreciator of individual differences. The only reason you can't appreciate individual differences is because you get caught in them. You're busy being less or more or dark or light or big or little or old or young or rich or poor or— all the possibilities. And the minute you're busy in any polarity, there's the judge. She's not as beautiful as I am. You think he's smarter than I am? I have more power. More or less. Judging, judging. The minute you can extract yourself from the web of individual differences, and rest behind it, then you can become such a connoisseur of it all. Wow, look at that anger. Whew! I remember I had an acid trip with a group of pushers in Berkeley some years back, and it was, it was a room with a painted ceiling, psychedelic, and about 8 speakers around the room. And we were using intravenous LSD and you just had time to get the needle out before you went. And so I was the guest of honor, so I was the first one. And so, I was going out to, as my friend says, la-la land. And I was on my way to the beyond the beyond. And I suddenly heard this. I felt this vibration in the room. And I looked and there was a young guy who was one of the distributors, and he was having a hard time. And the host of the session was busy reading from the psychedelic experience. And some of you that are old enough remember that's sort of an in-joke. That's a book that I helped coauthor, which is a takeoff on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. More takeoff than— and so I saw where my work lay. So I pulled myself back down from this space and I got up and I I staggered over to this guy and I fell on top of him and I whispered into his ear, okay, you've got all of our consciousness now. What do you want to do with it? I mean, you got us all. We're all here. Now what? You know, you're the master leader. And he turned to me with a look of venom, venomous hate. And he said, I'm going to take my chick and my motorcycle, and I'm going to go home and I'm going to get my .38 and I'm going to come back here and I'm going to blow your fucking brains out. Well, you're going to kill a beautiful guy if you do that. But if you got to. So he grabbed his girl who didn't really want to go anywhere at that moment, as you can imagine, and went towards the door. And I said, just one thing. And he turned. I said, when you go outside, you don't trust any of us because we're obviously, you know, bad. But look up at the sky. Because the stars are out and you can certainly trust the stars. You know that. What can they do to you? And I said, we'll be here. We're your friends and we're waiting here if you want to come back. And he went out the door and a couple of minutes later the door burst open and he came sobbing into the room and fell into the pile. It's a happy ending story. I wouldn't tell an acid story that didn't have a happy ending. There are some, but I won't tell them. But at the moment when there was hatred coming at me, the space of my consciousness was just this incredible compassion for this being that was full of hatred because I didn't buy being the object of the hate. And so the hate was just left hanging there. And that's really what Christ was saying. Go ahead, do it to me. Nail me up. Go ahead. Thorns. The whole trip. Do it all. I'm right here. But you think you're going to get me? I mean, that isn't who I am. I am my Father at one. Who are you going to get? You're just getting your projection of who you think is me. I mean, that's such an incredible statement that is reiterated over and over and over again among millions and millions of conscious minds, sometimes open to misinterpretation. If you are using a relationship to awaken Everything that your partner does is what they do, and that's part of the humanness of the situation. And don't deny the humanness and don't get lost in it. You can't push it away and uplevel. That's the one— Sunflower, it's your turn to do the dishes. And Sunflower answers, We're all one. To which you say, yes, Sunflower, I know that, but it's your turn to do the dishes. You can't cosmically uplevel. You've got to be true to the game on every level of reality. Every level. See, we used to get high and then we came down. That was the game we all played. How are you getting high? You know how to get high? Boy, did I get high the other night. Wow. You see, and we were busy going up and coming down and busy going up and coming down. But the game is much more interesting than that. We're going to take a break for 20 minutes. And those of you that have had enough, because some of you are hot and tired and had a heavy day and realize that everything I say is sort of like a veggie burger, it just keeps coming out and it's an infinite variety of this stuff. You should feel comfortable in leaving, that you won't miss anything. Because whatever you knew, you know, and whatever you don't, you probably won't hear anyway. When I speak, some people go, yes, right. Well, how do you know if you didn't know? You know, if you don't know, you say, geez, I don't know about that. And then you don't know anyway. You say, I'll write it down to study it later. You know, nonsense. You only come in here to have reinforced what you already believe anyway. The whole thing is nonsense. The whole thing is a total hype. I know that, but I play. It's my part. I mean, I don't take my part seriously. I just do it. I'm just like you. I'm another person just doing on the trip. This is my part. It's good for us, though, to talk about the dharma. Really is. It's just good for us to remember together. That's what satsang or sangha is. We're just remembering together. And what I'd like to do is after a 20-minute break, I'd like to have us do some singing of music and questions and answers to allow stuff to move around a lot of different topics. And we can go on for hours. So don't, you know, you get as much as you think you need and then some. But you got to realize, of course, that if you heard enough to even want to come to this place tonight, you are already hooked. And that you may think you can go home, but you can't. Either you're already home or you've blown it again. You see the predicament? I remember being on tour a couple of years ago and I was in Kansas City in the Ramada Inn.. And I thought, only about 4 more days and I can go home. And I move my home about every year. And I thought, geez, that's weird. I'm making myself miserable because I'm holding on to a model of home. Why isn't this home? I looked around at the completely ground. There's no figure in a Ramada Inn. It's all ground. That's what's so nice about it. If you go into somebody's house, it's all figure. Everything's saying, this is who I am, this is how it is, you know, this is reality, this is beauty, this is— see, if you go to a Ramada Inn, nobody lays any trips. It's completely, you know, it's like going into a white-walled monastery. It's perfect. You're not going to live in a Ramada Inn. Jeez, I hope so. I know this is home. Far out, I'm home. And I started yelling around the motel room, I'm home, everybody, I'm home. And all the gods rained down flowers from above. Nobody hears me. Don't worry. So go where you think you are going. It's very funny. It's very poignant. Don't you think we're poignant? I mean, I find us very poignant. We're really very sweet and we mean well. We are completely lost in our dramas, you know, and we take everything and organize it in order to preserve our dramas. Most of all the things we do spiritually are done to be happy in the world. Yeah, it's not funny. You can be everything you wanted to be, and you will be too. And then, then you'll see. Ram Tirath. I'm about to declare the 20-minute break for the child who was waiting to go home. But Ram Tirath, the beautiful spiritual being who It was very, very clear being, very clear. He said the following, and if you just feel your way into it, it's just a few lines. Just feel what it feels like to say these lines. Just say them quietly to yourself. I am without form. Without limit. I am beyond space, beyond time. I am in everything Everything is in me. I am the bliss of the universe. Everywhere I am. I am Sat-Chit-Ananda, total existence, total knowledge, total bliss. Tat Tvam Asi, I am that. No form, no limit, no space, no time. Mm. And yet here we meet in space and time and finite form. Mm. Or do we? Because you will leave this game to enter into another game, and that game will lead to another game. There'll be the game of going to bed. There'll be the game of going home. There'll be the game of eating. There'll be the game of waking up. There'll be the game of being a good parent. There'll be the game of being sick or being well, earning your living, worrying about the stock market or politics. Game after game after game, and behind it all, here we are. No time, no space, no boundaries. What do you suppose Armageddon means? Do you think it means the end or the beginning? Do you think the shift in consciousness that's represented by this collectivity in this room is after Armageddon or before. I think the domain of consciousness or awareness or spiritual clarity is a far more viable vehicle for social change than politics. And I'm now ready to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. The basic social institution is the individual human heart. That's the only one through which you will hear the clear message. You won't hear it from the government. You won't hear it from the church. You won't hear it from wise teachers. You will ultimately only hear it from inside your own heart. And in fact, you won't hear it. You will merely slowly become it. You cannot know truth, but you can be truth. As a river doesn't know it knows, but it is true. Don't underestimate the power of designing your life to give yourself a little bit of space to deepen your being. I know there's lots to do, but don't get too lost in being the doer. It's not a bad deal to sit on a rock. I sit for months on rocks. I mean, I go to India and I just sit on a rock every day. I go and I sit on my rock. I don't try to get holy. I have great thoughts. I just sit on the rock and the river goes by and thoughts come and thoughts go and fantasies and memories and plans and definitions of self and other and God come and go. And I keep on sitting on the rock. And after a while it all quiets down and there is just sitting on the rock and I am. And then I'm ready to come into the marketplace to do the dance, the marketplace being the place where my own desires are projected outward. And then I dance in the marketplace until the toxicities through my own attachments build up and I start to get lost into my own separateness. And then I go back and I sit on the rock. And when you've got the game designed optimally, you are driving down Beverly Boulevard and you are sitting on the rock. That's the art of the dance. The Ram Dass Here and Now podcast is brought to you by Be Here Now Network and ramdass.org. We appreciate you listening. You can support the preservation of Ram Dass's legacy by joining our Patreon. There you can find every episode of the Ram Dass Here and Now podcast ad-free, as well as commentary-free episodes of each episode, and guided practices from Ram Dass and friends. Visit patreon.com/ramdasspodcast for a free week trial.

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