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Taking time to look back and move forward. Conversations With KD episodes are derived from the recordings of KD’s online events from his home during the 2020/ 2021 days of social distancing and quarantine from the onset of COVID and beyond.
Call and Response Special Edition Conversations With KD August 1 2020
“One must try to get what one needs in life. One can not refuse to enter the fight because by doing that, you’ve given up. And if you think you can find God or find real love or be liberated without going through the battle, you’re dreaming. It’s only through getting into the fight, getting into the battle, the battle to be real and be present regardless of what’s going on in the emotional or outside world. That’s the battle, and if we don’t get involved in the battle, we will not be able to ever find any peace of mind or find any real love. We have to get in there and fight so we can see what our issues are.” – Krishna Das
Q: My question is, I was doing one of your courses from your website, and I saw a story where Maharajji asked you to perform puja of your mother when she was at the airport going back home.
Yeah.
I have a mother and an elder sister. I have a hard time connecting to them. Whatever you did, whatever Maharajji asked you to do with your mom at the airport, how did at affect your relationship with your mother?
Whatever it was, it wasn’t instant, really. My mother and I had a, we had a difficult relationship, mostly, until towards the end of her life. Then we got much closer.
He brought her to India in order to purify the karmas between us and to help her, of course, but to also help me. And the puja in the airport was interesting, because many years later there, it was in the middle of the airport… in those days, It was just like an airport hangar in Delhi. At the airport in Delhi in ‘72 was like a cow shed. There’s nothing wrong with that. Sometimes there are flying cows also.
So, there I was. She gave the camera, her camera to somebody and I, he told me I had to get down on my knees. He told me I had to get down on my knees. So, I did the arati with the lamp and I said a couple of mantras, and when I look at the picture that was taken at that moment, the look on her face was so extraordinary. I tell you, she looked like the goddess Durga. The love that was coming from her at that moment, when she was looking at me there, she never looked like that. That was the only moment in her life that she looked like that. It was amazing. He had really done a lot for her, really helped her a lot. Although, she had been, she was an alcoholic and she had, at that particular time I don’t think, yeah, she had been through a round or two already of rehab at that point. And then even after she went back, once again, she still had a hard time, went through another rehab, and then finally the last 20 years of her life or more, she was not drinking. So, he really, I believe that was by his grace because there was some kind of karmic black hole in her soul, which I have had, the same thing, have the same thing. And he saved her and then he saved me also from addiction.
But as far as my relationship, it was very difficult. So, what can you do? You don’t have to sit down in front of your mother, kneel down and do puja, but you do have to look inside of yourself and start to release all the negativity around your relationship with her.
You know, in Buddhism, they make a really big point of recognizing that your mother is the most important being in your life, because our mothers carried us for nine months in their own bodies. We’re made up mostly of her body and a little bit of our father’s one night stand or whatever, but the father has very little role after just at that first moment. The mother supports us. We live off of her. She feeds us inside of herself, and if we’re here today, if we’re still alive at this moment, it’s only because our mother made that possible. No matter what else she did to us; crushed us emotionally, manipulated us, screwed us up, made relationships impossible, or difficult, whatever else our relationship with our parents has done to us, we are only in a human body because of them. And we don’t even think about that. You know why? Because we don’t even treasure the human body. We think, “Ah, who gives a shit. Okay. I’ll be dead in a few years. It makes no fucking difference.”
That is not the case. It is said that the human body is so hard to come by. You know what they say? They say, “Imagine the huge ocean.” Okay? “And imagine at the bottom of this ocean, there’s a turtle that comes up to the top once every million years.” Okay? “At some point in the ocean, somewhere in the ocean, and then imagine there’s a bird flying across the ocean, anywhere in the ocean and it’s holding a handkerchief or a piece of clock in its beak that’s just hanging down,” Right? “Now, how often do you think that cloth will touch the shell of the turtle when it comes up for a minute or a second every million years?”
That’s how hard it is to get a human body. That’s what they say, the people who know, and Shankaracharya, who was the nondual advaita guru was also an incredible devotee and an incredible bhakta, and he wrote incredible devotional songs, and one of his hymns is called the “Devya Aparadha Kshamapana Stotram,” begging the goddess for forgiveness, and in it, he keeps saying, “O Mother,In this world, a bad child may be born, but there can’t be a bad mother… but never a bad mother.”
Just the fact that we got a body, that we’re alive and we were taken care enough to still be alive, no matter how fucked up we are, that’s an amazing thing.
So, once we get through those dark clouds of emotional stuff that we have, the reality is this, what I’m saying. It’s very hard. It’s very hard. And the other thing that they say is that we’ve all been everything to each other. We’ve been mother, brother, sister, enemy, friend, lover, king, servant. All of us, everybody on the planet, everybody in the universe has been in every different relationship to everybody else over the millions of lifetimes that we’ve had.
So, the mother relationship is really a big one. So, you don’t have to be in front of your mother, because fortunately or unfortunately, we carry that within us. And so, we can try to release that negativity and try to give some gratitude and thankfulness just for the fact that we have a body in the first place.
The problem is, that these days, very few of us really understand or experience deeply what this body is, can do, what we can do in this body, so to speak. The body’s just a piece of meat, but our soul is sitting in it, and through this body and with the help of this body and this situation, we can actually liberate ourselves from suffering and actually help other people liberate themselves. But we have to deal with our shit. If you don’t deal with your shit, your shit deals with you.
So, when you were speaking, I don’t know, I was fine. Today’s day was a nice day. As you said all these things, I am feeling very much a void in my heart. And the reason I asked you this question in first place was this, my sister right now, she’s struggling with her career. My mother she’s struggling with her mental and physical sickness. I don’t, I’m not capable enough to help them.
Why not? You can’t wash the floor? You can’t make chai? If you can’t make chai, you’re not Indian, don’t lie to me.
I can make. I just had one. I have Maharajji’s cup.
You can help. It’s just hard because you don’t feel loved or accepted by them and it’s painful for you. So, all I’m saying is, you should sit with this whole situation. Don’t try to do anything right away. Just try to see the whole situation and see your feelings, relive the histories that, everything that happened. See, you have to see yourself. See what’s going on inside of you, and then when you feel this negative feeling or this hard place inside, just slowly let it soften. That’s all. You have to do this yourself. Nobody can do it for you. So, if you don’t do it, it doesn’t happen. That’s your choice.
Can I try that prayer that you said? Of Adi Shankaracharya?
You can, but you know, that’s just more bullshit right now. The prayer ain’t going to help you right now.
Yes. You can certainly try. Look it up and you can read it and try to understand what he’s saying, though. Don’t just… don’t repeat the mantra mechanically. That’s not going to help you, but yes, definitely, look into that prayer. Keep reading it, understanding what it’s saying. Read it again and again and again and try to soften your heart. No technique is going to guarantee that you soften your heart. You have to want to, and that’s hard, because there’s probably anger, there is probably sadness, all these emotions. When we’re hurt, underneath the hurt is anger. If we’re hurt and sad, many times underneath that, there’s a lot of anger, unprocessed emotions, you know? So, you have to let them go. Just breathe quietly, slowly, gently, and just let yourself feel the whole atmosphere inside of you, and just let it release little by little, and then you’ll go, “Okay. Let’s do it again.” That’s practice. That’s what practice is. Letting go.
So, there’s no inside or outside either. Your mother is not outside of you. She’s inside of you, also. God is not outside of you, inside of you also. So, if you can’t release this stuff, how will you find real happiness, which is what God is? Real love, right? So, it’s all good.
The fact that you’re asking and involved is a great thing. You don’t realize, look around you. How many people give a shit about this? Most people just go on, they spend their whole lives in reaction mode and creating more bullshit and creating more negativity in their lives. You’re looking to find a way to be free. That’s fantastic. Give yourself some credit for that. That’s a really big thing. You don’t understand what a big thing that is. Most people pay no attention to this stuff. 99.9% of people on the planet, and many of them can’t. Even if they want to, they can’t. Because they’re homeless, they’re running from one government, kicking them out, they’re doing this, they’re running from bombs, they’re starving to death. Your karma has you in a fairly good place where you can at least look at the stuff inside of you and do some practice to get to know the Dharma. And that’s a great thing. That’s a result of your own work on yourself in the past. You want to be free because you know what freedom is already. So, now you just have to get with the program.
Q: From my childhood, I was practicing a lot of yoga, basically different courses, anything. Whatever, I was just, over two years, I was just reading and practicing. You know, I was a book yogi. But the last two or three years, then I realized something is not working. So, after, maybe after this lockdown had started, I started listening to you more. But I think, one and a half months back, something happened and one day just, I was listening to your chants, I just burst into tears. Something happened that was missing. Now, my question is, should I continue doing my other yoga practices or do chanting? Also with devotion, I’m not sure, because sometimes I feel, I just realized this, when Krishna says, “Just leave everything, come to me,” that is, I think, devotion.
Yeah. Sri Krishna says that at the end of the Bhagavad Gita. You have to go through the first 18 chapters to get to that, which means you have to live your whole life, a million lifetimes, to get to the place where you can actually surrender, or rather with surrender actually happens. We don’t surrender. The ego just will never give up, but by grace eventually it’s released. We have such vasanas in our mind, such tendencies. It is very hard to overcome those tendencies, and you have, we all have our own version of that stuff. It doesn’t matter what practice you do. It will become mechanical sooner or later, because that’s what you do to it. So, whatever practice you do, you’re supposed to let go and come back to the practice. Whether you’re doing kriya, asana, pranayama, japa, kirtan, your only job is to let go of whatever feeling you have, whatever thoughts you have, whatever imagining you have, whatever memories, whatever fantasies, and come back to the practice. Bring yourself back again and again. That’s the only thing that will gradually release you, release us from the tendencies, the vasanas in our mind.
So, you’re not doing anything wrong, but you’re just, the vasanas are still keeping you pointed towards them, in a sense. And you say, “Well, I’m greedy. Maybe this is…”
This is all nonsensical stuff that we keep ourselves busy with all the time. So, when you see it, all you have to do is let go. You don’t have to understand. There’s nothing to understand. The illusion is that, “I have to understand this. What is this?” No, all you have to do is let it go. And that’s not so easy, which is why we do a practice. Then we have something to come back to when we let go. If we don’t have anything to come back to, how do we let go? Right? So, everything’s working fine. You have this, you’re in a hurry. That’s your vasanas of your mind. That’s your, the way you think about your things and yourself. That will change over time through practice. But one must do practice regularly, whatever practice it is, and one should try to do it wholeheartedly. But even that is difficult because of the way you think and the way you feel. You can’t do it wholeheartedly. So, what do you do? You notice that, then you beat yourself up, then you notice that, then you come back. Don’t forget to beat yourself up a little bit. I want you to be comfortable.
So, it’s all okay. You just keep going. That’s all. Maharajji used to say, “Go on repeating the name, whether you’re having any kind of devotional feelings, whether you’re tired with your angry, it doesn’t matter. Just keep repeating the name and sooner or later, the real Ram will come.”
So, this is a very deep philosophical statement that only Maharajji could say like that, like a simple little thing. It’s the whole path right there. It doesn’t matter what you think. It doesn’t matter what you feel. Who gives a shit? Nobody except you. And if you didn’t give a shit, where would you find anybody in the world to care what you’re thinking about? Right? That’s how flimsy it is.
So, just keep coming back, keep letting, go. Keep coming back, keep letting go. That’s all. Don’t take yourself so goddamn seriously. But you can’t help it. We can’t help it because we’ve been brought up that way. Everybody we meet does it. It seems reasonable. I have to think about myself, don’t I? I don’t know. Maybe?
So, don’t worry. You’ll be able to walk on the right side of the street eventually and wear a mask and do the right things. But while you’re doing your practice, your only job is to let go. See what’s there. Maybe it’s a blissful feeling. Very nice. Be with it. Don’t get trapped in it. Just be with it. And then when it disappears, which it will, don’t feel bad. That’s another feeling. And then it comes back. Then you feel good, then it goes away, you feel bad, then it comes back. Keep letting go. That trains the mind to just release more quickly and more gracefully. Then everything you do is planting seeds. Every breath, every thought every action is a karma that gets created by us. So, what do we want to create? More stuff or the letting go of stuff and coming back to our true self?
So, when we do practice, we’re planting those kinds of seeds and one should try to do some regular practice. Even if it’s two minutes.
Some people say, “I have no time. I can’t do it.”
And they actually believe that, when really, they’ve wasted 23 hours of the day. Anyhow, they can always do a little practice, but it’s our expectations that torture us. So, let go. You don’t know what’s going to happen in the next instant, the next second. Nobody does. So, let’s be here now, again and again and again, and plant the seeds of devotion of wholeheartedness of sincerity, plant the seeds of kindness and compassion and caring, and notice how much you think about yourself. Really? Is it that interesting? You have to keep thinking the same shit over and over again?
No, it’s not. And if you didn’t think those things, where would they be in the universe? Nowhere. So let them go, again and again. It’s all good. We’re in such a hurry and there’s no reason to be in a hurry. There’s too many stoplights. You have to stop anyway. And again and again and again. So, just take your time. Be at ease. Be grateful for what you have. Be happy for what you have and still do the practice that you need to do to free yourself more and to feel better about yourself.
There isn’t some feeling outside of you or some God outside of you that all of a sudden is going to push the button and make everything okay. It doesn’t work like that. You are the button, and when you come home to yourself again and again, you’re in exactly the right place. So just keep doing your practices, whatever you do. It doesn’t matter, but whatever you do, do it with wholeheartedness and sincerity as best you can.
Q: Good to see you. Last time we talked, I think was in May. Since that time, I think at that time I was upset because my younger grandson who just turned 13 had been institutionalized by his father, and I was really upset. The truth of the matter is he’s still there six months later. At least, you know, I can talk to him now via Zoom. But then my older grandson, the reason he staying with me, he just turned 14. His father, he’s currently living with his father and his father’s girlfriend and her two younger children, who I think are five and seven, and he was just accused by that young girl of molestation. Well, let’s put it this way. Something she said has now caused him to be accused of molesting her.
So, he’s staying with me because he can’t stay at home. He’s really upset. It’s like he’s been set up for something, which was unnecessary. And then on top of that, about two, exactly two weeks ago, my nephew, my sister’s older son, he’s an adult, was killed in a four-wheeler accident in upstate Pennsylvania. And I had to take my older grandson with me to go up and be with my sister, who’s my baby sister. And you know, I don’t even really expect an answer to this, because I have a therapist. I don’t expect you to do that. But I feel like I am lost in the jungle right now and I can’t find a path.
And you know, believe it or not, I actually read the Ramacharitamanasa at the beginning of this spring. I did that because you said that really had inspired you when you when you were first involved. So, I decided I should do that. In that time when Ram is in the jungle, or the forest, as they call it in this translation, anyway, I feel like that.
You wish.
Yeah. Yeah. Don’t I wish? Don’t I wish I were him in the jungle?
You are. That’s the whole point.
Yeah. Yeah. Technically speaking, I know that’s true.
No, no. Actually speaking. Technically speaking, you don’t believe it, but actually speaking, you are.
Intellectually, I do believe it, but having the experience of it is a different thing. So anyway, so that’s where I am right now.
Okay. Big time stuff. This is a lot of big time, heavy karma. No question about it.. It’s not our job to make light of it in any way whatsoever. So, it’s really big stuff for everybody in your family. Very, very big stuff. And how lucky your grandson is to have you, by the way. Really. I mean, if you weren’t there, what would happen to him? So, how beautiful it is, a great grace on him and you, too, to be together at this point and to be brought together.
But, and that being said, I spend a lot of time in my meditation room. I spend a lot of time crying while trying to chant with you because I think I have to. But, so I’m doing what I can. I just wanted to say, that’s where I am. But I really have a question actually about the Ramacharitamanasa, which is this: my favorite part of it, believe it or not, in some perverse way, was Shiva’s wedding procession. You remember that part?
It was a great party. Let me tell you, I remember it well.
And so I’m thinking, why of all the parts in that 600 page book, did that stand out to me as something that I actually related to when it was such a horrible, it was such a horror, you know, and if, I guess I should say what it is so people know what I’m talking about, which is, Shiva’s wedding procession to marry Parvati, the daughter of the mountain, of the Himalayas, was with his hair in complete disarray and wearing some kind of a wild animal skin, his jewelry was snakes and his entourage was made up of ghouls and demons, not even demons, ghouls and goblins and carrying, some with heads, some with no heads, some carrying the heads of dead animals. It was really a horror. And yet, when he got to the city, I forgot the name of the city where Parvati lived, everybody, of course, was horrified except Parvati, who kind of said, “Oh well, that’s Shiva, you know? And I just, I’m wondering, I liked that part of it better than I liked the whole part about Ram being in the forest, actually. There was something that I related to in that way, in that scene, just that I related to. So, there it is.
That’s just your mind. It’s okay to be to be moved by what you’re moved by. You don’t have to try to pick it apart and destroy it.
Shiva transmutes tamasya, the darkness, the inertia. He’s completely pure, untouched, unmoved, undefiled, pure being, pure consciousness. And Maharajji used to say that his devotees were Shiva’s wedding party.
Maybe that’s where it came from.
Absolutely. No question about it.
It came from you then.
Yeah. And his old devotees, the real old devotees that I met, they worshiped him as Shiva, not even as Hanuman, but Shiva’s the next bump up, so to speak. And Hanuman is a form of Shiva, but Tiwari and these other old devotees, many of them saw him as Shiva, and Shiva is completely, totally pure. He’s pure being, pure consciousness, and even the darkest inertia can’t touch him. It can’t defile him in any way, but the goodie goodies, they don’t like that stuff, because it’s beyond the rules. It’s beyond the accepted norm. And so, it’s always very disturbing when they, when you see an avadhut walking around naked. The English used to put them in jail.
There was one great Sufi Saint named Tajuddin Maharaj, who was like, at the same time as Sai Baba, Shirdi Sai Baba, and he spent 30 years in a mental hospital because he was wandering around naked on the tennis courts of the English. So, they put him away. And every Thursday, which is the Muslim holiday, thousands of people would come for his Darshan at the insane asylum.
So, these are the people who are, this is beyond form. This is another path than the Vaishnav path, which is goodness, purity in that kind of way, light. Lakshmi is light. All this beautiful shining, that’s one path, that’s a different path. The Shaivite path is very different. There’s a great book called “Lord of the Meeting Rivers.” You’ll love it. It’s poetry from the south, and it’s extraordinary. You will die to read this. This is the real, this is mainlining. This is the biggest time. “Lord of the Meeting Rivers.” Wow.
And yeah, it’s funny you should use the word “goodie goodies,” because that’s exactly the word that I use to try to describe what I didn’t like about certain parts of certain practices, that has nothing to do with anybody else. It just has to do with me.
You’re Catholic, right?
No.
Oh, you’re not. Well, you should be Catholic with all that guilt. A goody-goody. Yeah. I mean, sometimes those people get very tense and very tight, but Shiva is the one who’ll blow all that up. He’s beyond the forms, beyond the rules, but completely, totally pure. You know what I mean? There’s no, he’s just beyond purity and impurity. That’s how pure he is. The Vaishnavs can also get a little bit attached to purity and cleanliness and all that stuff. And this guy lives in the graveyards smeared with ashes.
That was part of it. Yeah. It’s funny because I once was given a spiritual name that I never used, but, because I never understood it, but it was “Nirguna.”
“Nirguna.” Very good. Nirguna means beyond form, beyond Gunas, beyond qualities. Shiva.
Yeah. I don’t get that.
Yes, you do. That’s who you are inside. When you can slip out of your very tightly wound judgmental mind, that’s who you are. If you want to read another great thing about Shiva, go back and find, in Uttarakhand, where Kakabhusundhi is telling Garuda about how he became a Saint.
I sing that all the time, the Shiva Stuti or the rudraksha, the Rudra Stotram or something like that.
Don’t you do sing something from that on Door of Faith?
Yeah, I do. Yeah. In between, I chant. I sing the whole thing on Door of Faith.
Yes. So go back and read the “Namaa miisha mishaana-nirvaana rupam.” “I bow to the Lord of the North, whose form is liberation.” Wow. That’s just the first line. Where do you go from there? Nirvana rupam. Oh my God. And Tiwari, Mr. Tiwari was a great Shiva Bhakta. That was his main thing. At Shiva Puja, we used to do three, four hours at a time. Just amazing puja he did.
One time on Shivaratri, Maharajji happened to be, I guess maybe it was Lucknow but it could have been Nainital, Tiwari was there and he was going to do his puja that day and that night but he was supposed to fast. So, he was with Maharajji and a whole bunch of other people, and Maharajji said, “Here, take this prasad,” and Tiwari hesitated, and he said, “I can’t take it. I’m doing my puja.” “Nay, take.”
So, he took it, he ate, he broke his fast. So now he’s thinking then, “I won’t do my puja for the first time in my life on Shivaratri. Ok, all right. If that’s what he wants.”
So then, sitting there, Maharajji says to him, “Okay. Do your puja now.”
And he said to me, in his whole life, that puja that he did that night, that at that time, right there, was the one time that Shiva himself did the puja through him. Yeah. It’s amazing.
Great. Yeah. So, thank you. Thank you. I don’t want to hold you up because I know there are other people who want to ask. Thank you for your time.
Yeah. Very good. Good luck with your grandson and try not to judge too harshly what’s going on around you. Just let it play out and just keep your, try to keep some calmness of spirit and let the things play out. There’s nothing you can do on this level to change much, except to love everybody as best you can and let them, let this play out, and the calmer you can be, the wider hearted, so that the stuff doesn’t beat you up, you just let it come in and let it go through you. That’s the best you can do for this situation, and love that grandson of yours to death.
I will. Thank you.
Q: Hey, I wanted to know if you know more about this quote, if you know a story behind it. It’s just this quote I’ve seen attributed to Maharajji: “Treat all women as mothers, serve them as the mother and the ego disappears.”
That quote, do you know where that came from or what the context was or any stories around it?
You know, a lot of times, Westerners, couples would come to Maharajji and say they’re having problems. So, Maharajji would say to the man, “Just treat your wife, just treat her as your mother.”
And the guy would say, “But I hate my mother!”
And Maharajji would say, “What? What did he say? What did he say?”
It was really funny, the two cultures coming aginst each other, you know, but like we were talking about mothers before with that the other gentleman, Maharajji always said, “I follow the mother. I always follow the Mother,” the goddess.
And because of the way, in India, mothers are seen by their children, even the Dalai Lama said he, the only reason he knows about kindness and compassion is because of his mother. He learned, He absorbed that from his mother’s kindness. So in in India, it’s not unusual, that’s not an unusual statement. “See all women as mother, as the mother, as the goddess and treat them that way.” Of course, in practice that’s very difficult, because we don’t, we’re just totally lost in our own egos and our own desires, but he would, he was presenting us with a path. To liberate ourselves from that stuff is to see all women as the mother, as the goddess, in the same way, all women would see all men as Ram or Krishna. It’s the same. It’s a way of getting through your worldview, which is very sense oriented and egoistic and limited.
Thank you.
And like, He had me worship my mother and do the puja to my mother in the airport. That, I feel that created a seed of connection between us on a deeper level that, over years or maybe even lifetimes, will continue to deepen. So yeah. The west is such a, family life is so fraught with emotional issues that, at least previously in India, before the last couple of generations, it didn’t exist like that, you know?
And one time I was sitting with Siddhi Ma in the back of the temple and all the grandchildren and cousins of the Tiwari family came. The oldest grandson was getting married so they came to the temple for blessings, and there were 15 or 16 of these younger people sitting with Ma and I was sitting there and I was watching these kids and I just, they were so loving with each other and so sweet. I was just, my mouth was hanging open and I didn’t say anything, but Siddha Ma turned to me and she said, “You see Krishna Das? You see what you missed by being born in America?”
It’s like being born in a washing machine. You know? You don’t know what’s up, what’s down. Who wants what, what’s going on. It’s just another way and it’s very, it really instills a lot of programs within us that are very painful and very negative and very hard to overcome, for sure. So, but that’s all part of our work. We get other blessings by being born in America. Television and probably enough food and a place to sleep, which we take totally for granted and which we shouldn’t, but we do. And so, if we are disposed to doing practice, at least we know we’re not afraid of where our next meal is going to come from. A lot, most of the world is. And we know we have, we’re probably going to have some food in the refrigerator and a place to sleep, which is a total blessing that we don’t, we take for granted, completely take it for granted.
But you know, when Maharajji says things he’s not just mouthing off. He’s actually creating a new storyline, planting a new storyline inside of us. Now that storyline may not actually get activated right away, but over time. He doesn’t, mostly he’s not in a hurry. He does things at the right speed for everybody. So, when he says something and gives a little teaching or something… like He said to us way back when, “Love everyone, serve everyone, remember God…” “How do you raise Kundalini? Feed people.”
You know, “What is he talking about?” at the time, but over all these years, those seeds that he planted, they’ve grown underneath the radar. I’m not growing them. You’re not growing them. They’re growing because he planted them. And the real meaning of the things that he says will manifest as time goes on. Because he’s not a teacher. He’s a Siddha. He does. He changes things. He doesn’t ask you. He just moves your karmas around to make things better for you.
So, one should not approach the things he says purely on an intellectual level. I want us to understand he’s energizing some part of you. He’s making, he’s bringing life to some part of you that you’re not even aware of exists, and over time you begin to understand what those things mean, like “love, serve, remember.” Yeah, we understood it word wise, but in terms of actual being that way and living that way so much purification of the heart had to happen.
Q: So you read a book by Stephen Jenkinson called “Die Wise”?
I think I haven’t read it, but I saw the book somewhere.
My question for you is this, what are you doing to plan to die wise? Are you thinking about it a lot? How’s the plan going? Tell us about what your, what’s going to happen at the end? Will there be a cone at the end or… What’s happening?
No. There’s going to be a commercial at the end.
Well, you know they say that the way you live is the way you die. You can’t imagine that you come to that last moment, having lived a life of stupidity, and all of a sudden you’re going to be wise at the end, and they also say that, the previous Karmapa had said the only thing you take with you when you leave your body is your state of mind. So, if you’re asking what I do, I do the same thing I do every day. I try to live the best way I can. I try to keep my heart open as it can be. I try to give myself as much as I can to whatever practice I’m doing, and I try to manifest the best possible state of mind that I’m capable of. So, I give myself a hundred percent, 3% of the time, and I think that’s pretty good.
So, how do you envision that moment? How do you envision the moment that you leave here and you’re with Maharajji?
Well, I don’t know, but I was just with Ram Dass about, maybe a week, a little more than a week before he left the body, and on the last day that I was leaving, I went to say goodbye in the morning, and he was lying in bed. He had already been in bed for about five days. He hadn’t gotten out and he didn’t get out again. And he was lying there in bed with his eyes closed. So, I bent over him like, with my face above his, and he opened his eyes and his expression on his face was so extraordinary. It was so extraordinary. There was love beaming like the sun. It was so beautiful. So beautiful. And he was completely at ease. He was not worried about where he was going or what was going to happen. He was completely at ease and open, even with all the pain that he was in. It didn’t affect him. It was extraordinary. So that’s what I’m looking for. That’s what I hope to be, and if I get the chance to be that way.
You know, when Maharajji made me the pujari of the Durga Temple, he asked me to distribute the charanamrita which is the water that’s used to wash the murti. The people come up, you pour a little water into their hand and they sip it, and there’s a mantra that you do when you give charanamrita out. I ought to try to remember the whole mantra, but in English, it’s “to protect against,” what’s the word, “sudden death” and to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, the idea is that sudden death or dying, for instance, in your sleep is not well, but it doesn’t say that… sudden death, because you get a chance to prepare, just like you’re saying. If it’s a sudden death like an accident, you’re not ready to go necessarily. So, there’s a bit of a shock to the system, to say the least. So, to protect against that, you sip this charanamrita, this water. So that’s what, you know that’s a very important concept in terms of yoga and the path, is that one lives as if one’s going to die with the next breath. This is why, in Buddhism they spend so much time meditating on the reality of death, which is, “I might not be able to take my next breath. There’s no guarantee.”
So, do I want to have regrets? Do I want to have unfinished stuff? No. I want to finish up. I want to be at ease with everything, which means I have to work on my relationships with people. I have to work on my relationship with myself. I have to be aware of what I’m doing. Am I causing suffering? Am I not? This is all, how you live in this moment translates to the next moment. And then the next moment might be in another body. No one knows and if they do know they’re not telling me.
Q: Hi KD.
Hello.
I love you, and if I think of you, even if I think of you, my heart opens and it’s uncontrollable and full and I’m so grateful, and I see you, I see you everywhere, and some quiet presence that’s really deep and vast. It’s in the trees as well, and actually Jesus used to say, “The kingdom of heaven is around us, but men do not see it” and I’m feeling like that sometimes. And I’m totally messed up, of course. I mean, I have all my issues and I keep working on them and I really wanted to talk to you today. Usually, I just listen to you talking to everybody. I have some questions, but I’m not going to ask them because I feel like I should work on them and work through them and see what happens. I’ve started talking to Ram Dass, too. I started in my twenties, obsessively listening to Ram Dass, reading all books, and I love his words. Sometimes when I play the podcast, his old talks, I feel like he’s right here. And then this morning, I was listening to him and I told him I really love him and he said, “I know, I love you too.” And I realized, “Oh, he’s just a presence too.”
That’s easy for him now that he’s dead.
I just love you.
Thank you. Very good. Well, may you always be in that love.
I miss you so much. I mean, just sitting in kirtan and coming to the kirtan, I miss it so much. Probably not as much as you miss it.
No, I don’t. I miss the band a little bit, but I’ve been singing a lot. It’s been good. It’s been very good. Keep singing, keep taking the name. The name is that love that you feel. That’s the name. That’s what it is.
Q: Thank you. How can be balance desire and letting go?
First, you grab. Then you’re let go. Totally balanced. What’s wrong? Easy.
They’re actually not different things, to tell you the truth. Any action you take based on selfish interest or self-centered interests is desire-motivated. It doesn’t matter what it is. Letting go can happen all the time and desires can arise. You can actually satisfy those desires, but you don’t necessarily have to be imprisoned by the desire or the action. That’s a very advanced state. For most of us, we are very conflicted about getting what we want. We don’t know how to get what we want actually and what we need, and so, we’re completely screwed up about it all. And so, the idea of letting go is impossible for us because we’re totally identified with being stuck and not getting what we want and not having what we need in life. We don’t have money. We don’t have a house. We don’t have relationships that bring us joy. We don’t have this. We don’t have that. We’re in hunger, poverty mode in our emotional environment and emotional atmosphere, for most of us. So, the best way to let go is to get out there and get what you want and try to get what you need, and when you do that, you’ll come up against your own issues about being good to yourself and your own issues about feeding yourself. There’s nothing inherently wrong with desire. What’s wrong, or what’s not accurate is that we’ll be happy when we get what we desire. We might be a little happy for a little while, but it doesn’t last. So, another desire pops up and we go after that one and get a little happy and then that passes, et cetera.
So, one must try to get what one needs in life. One can not refuse to enter the fight because by doing that, you’ve given up. And if you think you can find God or find real love or be liberated without going through the battle, you’re dreaming. It’s only through getting into the fight, getting into the battle, the battle to be real and be present regardless of what’s going on in the emotional or outside world. That’s the battle, and if we don’t get involved in the battle, we will not be able to ever find any peace of mind or find any real love. We have to get in there and fight so we can see what our issues are. Arjuna, the greatest warrior there ever was, did not want to fight because he saw he was going to have to deal with all his stuff, and actually he was thinking, in his case, it was the family. He was going to have to slaughter one whole side of his family in order to fulfill his role as the protector of the other side of the family. And he said, “No way am I doing that.”
And then Krishna says, “Your words sound wise, but is it real wisdom?”
And then he proceeded to unravel reality for Arjuna and show him what life really was about and how to go about becoming a real spiritual warrior.
So, the only way we get the strength to let go is to see what we have to let go of, and unless we get involved in the battle, which is our illusion, delusion that we’re going to be happy with stuff, and happy with our desires, and getting what we want it going to make us happy forever, and we can keep on getting new stuff to stay on that excitement edge.
So, that’s one way of looking at it. The other way is, Maharajji said, “You want it? Don’t take it.”
Oh. “You want it? Don’t take it.”
You want this chai? Don’t take it. That teaching was beyond my capacity. So, I had to go the other way, which is, I had to go through, and still going through dealing with the things that my desires have manifested in my life, and trying to stay present, and alive, and awake, and keep my heart open, regardless of what’s going on.
Q: I wanted to ask you about the endings of romantic relationships, especially now, because everybody’s on the computer so much, you know on zoom and all that. It’s so tempting to try to look somebody up from your past. So, do you have any? That’s one thing, and another part of that question is the thinking, you know, about, ruminating about why it didn’t work out. And I know that you’ll say to let go, but you know, the whole thing about not understanding, it just doesn’t make any sense kind of thing. So, I guess those two things go together, and the looking the person up.
Well, flirting with yourself about going, getting in touch with someone, with whom you had a relationship that caused you a lot of pain, that’s the same thing that got you into the relationship in the first place, the desire to hurt yourself, even though it didn’t look like that at the time, but that’s of course what happened. So, if you take time out of the factor, when you got together in the first minute, you’re already hurt. Can you understand that?
But in the case the relationship was positive? And really, that’s what the confusion is. Sometimes, it’s really good and then eventually it doesn’t work out. So, there’s some positive.
When you say it’s “really good,” what does that really mean?
Well, like you were saying, the whole thing about the excitement and then the happiness and then it only stays temporarily.
Yeah.
Right? It’s like that kind of thing where there is happiness and then it just doesn’t last for whatever reason.
There’s a happiness because that person needed something from you also, like you needed something from that person, and you were both willing to provide that for a certain amount of time. So, both of you were using each other to push the pleasure button and the love button, so you could feel okay about yourselves. The point was, neither one of you probably felt okay about yourselves underneath it all, which is why you wanted somebody to push that button. That’s why you needed somebody to push that button. And then when that person, for whatever reason, found somebody else’s button to push, or somebody else offered them a better button or a new button, or a more exciting button, or just a different button, your button became less fun for that person. So, that could have happened from your side, too. All of a sudden somebody else, a big shiny button shows up in your life and that other old dusty button didn’t look so good anymore. That’s human nature.
Okay, but what about the whole thing now with the pandemic? Because everybody, it’s so hard if you’re not out and about, not to go look people up. So, it’s almost out of, it’s like out of just boredom.
That’s not what’s hard. What’s hard is being okay just being you here now. That’s what’s hard. So, you’re looking for anything to do to take you out of just being here, and that’s perfectly normal, but at some point you have to kind of say, “Well, is this really going to be in my best interests?” And if it is, fine. Maybe you have something to say to somebody that you never could say 10 years ago, like, “thank you for this” or “thank you for that, without trying to get something from that person even now.
So, maybe there’s some strings that you want to tie up and make sure that, from your side you’re feeling okay about it at all, but I don’t think that’s what it is. I think you’re just antsy.
No, because you rightA person doesn’t want to be in the present because of boredom.
That’s great. So just watch yourself. Watch yourself put your hand on the mouse. Watch it go to that place on Facebook. Watch it send a message and go, “Oh no, don’t do that. Ah, shit. I sent that message. What am I going to do now?”
And then, “But he didn’t respond. It’s been 13 seconds and they haven’t gotten back to me.”
So then you go on that whole trip and then you’re ready to jump out the window and it goes off again. You go, “Oh, they responded! How great!”
You have to see all that. It’s all beautiful. It’s all amazing. It’s all extraordinary how we fuck ourselves up again and again. It’s so extraordinary. We’re so good at it. It’s really, we’ve trained our whole lives to be like this. It’s amazing.
So, try to watch it a little more than do it, but if you feel you really need to do it, do it. Why not?
It may not be to send a message, it may be you just want to go look let’s see, like, you’re curious, what’s going on.
Yeah, that’s called masturbation. It’s different than fucking, but it’s definitely a sexual thing. So, there’s nothing wrong with either one. Just turn your camera off. That’s all. You know, it’s okay. But you know,
If I’m going to look somebody up, I’m going to remember what you just said and I won’t. I’ll be here now instead.
Just slap your hand whenever you go for that mouse, just like your mother would have slapped your hand when you were a kid. I’m joking. I’m just joking around. But there’s an element of that. Isn’t there?
Well, there’s a chance you could get hurt. It’s a gamble. You can get hurt. I totally don’t know. And it could be something bad. Sometimes you look something up and you find out they’re not doing well and they can make you feel good, too.
Exactly. Yeah. But, okay, but how useful is it for you to see that you still have that stuff. It’s really useful because that stuff, just because you haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it hasn’t been there. Just because you haven’t seen it, like that feeling like they’re really doing well, you know why? You know what they say? There’s They’re called “The Four Immeasurables.” One is compassion. One is loving kindness. One is equanimity. And the fourth and the most difficult one to cultivate is spontaneous joy, which means joy in another’s joy, happiness that another person is happy. This is very hard for us. When somebody else is happy, our first gut reaction is like, “Why not me? Why don’t I have more of that?”
It’s really deeply ingrained in us, and they say in Buddhism, you want to cultivate these four qualities, which purifies all the negative qualities that we have. They’re actually called antidotes for the negativity, too. But the most difficult one to cultivate is this joy in another’s happiness.
Especially if you’re angry at them or if they made you upset.
Exactly. For sure. But don’t you see that anger, even though it’s not present in your consciousness every day, is still pushing you around from within. And so, it’s good to be able to see that. If you don’t see it, You can’t let it go. You can’t deal with it. It’s just pushing from behind and you wonder why. “Why am I acting like this? Why do I feel like this?” Because you’re being pushed by your stuff, by the shadows from behind. So, this is really hard stuff. I mean, we’re making light of it a little bit, but it’s really painful, really hard stuff, but that’s why a regular practice, whatever it is, japa, chanting, meditation, breath work, something like that done regularly, it deepens your center of gravity. It moves you deeper into yourself and that makes it easier to let go of that stuff and easier to become aware of what’s pushing you around. If you’re not aware of it, it’s not going to go away by itself. It has to be let go of. So, this is great. That’s why this time of the pandemic, it’s such a great opportunity for us, for people who are working on themselves, because we look around the room and all we see is our mind dripping off the walls and there’s nowhere to escape it. So, you have to deal with it. So that’s great, but you’re doing good work. It’s great. I really respect it, and really continue to just pay attention and everything will be okay.
Okay. Thank you so much.
Q: Thank you for your advice you gave me the other day by email, and it got me to thinking outside of the box a bit because you, one of your suggestions was I should benefit most greatly by the addition of other people with the kind of issues that I have. These meetings aren’t easy to come by. In fact, I think because of lockdown, they’ve been stopped. So, I was thinking, yeah, I can get a circle of people in my home, people I know and do it that way. So that was, yeah, that was a very innovative thought of yours. So, thank you for that. And the other thing, I just wanted to ask you a quick question, and the question was, I once heard you say, or perhaps it was Maharajji said it…
There’s a small difference.
Yeah, I’d say, actually there probably is. What about, if all the things that we have, all the things that we have about us, the people, the feelings, the physical things that we have about us, our homes, our cars, our dogs, that kind of thing, what if we were meant to have them? Wouldn’t that be okay?
Yeah. I said that.
Yeah, you said that. So, would that surely make us all feel better in a way? Because we live, some of us, in the socioeconomic divide in this country. There’s a great socioeconomic divide and there’s always guilt, there’s always and there’s always somebody who will be bound to put you down for something you have or something you don’t have, and I did, I just started, as a byline, there’s a book called “The Body,” written by a man called Paramananda. He’s from Cambridge, and in this book, he’s written out a radical Buddhist prayer, and it goes, “Everything about you is good, your name, your Christian name, your children, the day of your…”
I’m not reciting this, right, but it goes along these lines. Everything about you and everything you have is okay. It’s good. Even the day you die. Everything about you, if you’re walking in the path, you surely cannot go wrong.
Yeah, that’s a good aphorism. That’s a good positive statement to make. That’s on a personal level, that we want to stop feeling bad about the things we have. That doesn’t mean we can’t share and care about other people, but there’s no reason to hurt ourselves for no, you know, just for things that we have. Everybody needs to eat and sleep and have a certain amount of stuff. That doesn’t mean that we can’t help other people as well and be aware of the suffering that’s inherent in the world. That doesn’t mean we ourselves have to feel guilty in any way with that.
Guilt goes with the territory.
What’s that?
Guilt appears, speaking for myself and for others, it appears to go with the territory.
Well, your territory anyway. And that’s the way it is. Each one of us has our own territory that we live in, an atmosphere that we live in, and out of that atmosphere, we act and feel all kinds of things. So, you understand, the soul is fine. Your soul is perfect. Your soul is love. Your soul is light. It’s truth. It’s reality. There is no suffering in your soul. The suffering that we have is in our egoistic part of us, the part of us that relates with the egoistic world, the world of that self-centered, small “s” self, but we aren’t, it’s our soul that given us life in the first place, even right at this moment, but we don’t know what that is. We’re facing outside. We’re looking out from the inside and we’re identified with our emotions, with our feelings, with our stories that we tell ourselves. We’re identified with all that external stuff, but we don’t see our true nature. If we could be more in touch with our true nature, we would feel much better, regardless of all this other stuff.
So, our work is to disentangle our stuff from our stuff and to train ourselves somehow not to believe every story we tell ourselves about ourselves, which are usually negative, because those are the ones we love. We’ve been trained our whole life to hate ourselves and to look, and not even to know ourselves, but to hate and loathe our self, and there’s really no good reason for that, except that’s the way the Western world lives, totally out of touch with reality and in the egoistic, self-centered mind.
Sorry. You say that it goes, in an email you said it goes back to a very early age. Nobody had ever told me that. I didn’t realize, I thought it went back to, I don’t know, when you’re a teenager, like that. Before that even?
Before that. Like when my mother was in the hospital, when she was dying, she was on painkillers. She had cancer and she was lying in the bed and there was a little table, right? Over her, a little table, and so there was water and a pitcher of water on the table. So, she asked me to pour some water. So, I poured the water and as I put the pitcher back down, I bumped the table a little bit. Right? Just bumped the table. And she looked at me like this. You know? And my whole body contorted. I went like this. You know? It’s like I got punched in the stomach, and at that moment I saw something so incredible. At that moment I recognized that she had always been doing that to me, that even before I can remember, she’d been throwing me these gut punches, and I grew up with this feeling like I could be punched at any moment. At any moment, I was going to get a punch in the stomach, and it was extraordinary because I saw that even before I knew “me,” that was happening. Before I could remember, before I had any, I grew up with that from such an early age, and it was an incredible thing to see that, because here I was like 50 years old, 60 years old and I’m still, I’m still trying to protect myself from this gut punch that could come at any time. It was a powerful moment.
So that’s what I mean. We have stuff in there that’s been going on since day fucking one, and it’s still pushing us around and we don’t see it. We don’t have a way to see it. We don’t have a clue. The only clue we get is what we are doing to ourselves right now. Right?
Those gut punches I give my myself when things go wrong, and I don’t mean to do it. I don’t do them on purpose.
No, you don’t. But you’ve been trained. You’ve been trained just like I was trained. That’s what we do. So, once you see it though, it changes. It may not feel like it, but when, if you can see it, then it’s not the same as it was before you saw it. We used to think that that was just the way that, we didn’t even notice we were doing it to ourselves. Now we notice and sooner or later we will get a vote as to where we’re going to, are we going to let that happen again? Are we going to do that to ourselves? Are we going to believe that shit again? It comes little by little. It comes. There’s no quick button to push. We spend all our lives fucking ourselves up. It’s not going to unfuck in two seconds.
But It will come?
Of course, one way or another, of course.
You talk about things on the satsang last night and you know, there was so many bits where I saw, “I haven’t got there yet. I haven’t got there yet either. No, I haven’t got there yet either.”
Well, that’s one way of telling yourself a story, isn’t it, that you believe? Who knows if it’s true, but you believe it. If you didn’t think these things, where would they be? If these kinds of stories didn’t arise in your mind, and if you didn’t take them personally and believe them, where would they be? They would just go right through like a cloud and disappear, but we hang on to them because we’ve been trained to hang on to them. They are not necessarily true, but we believe them.
So, is this where the meditation helps?
Yeah, little by little, not all at once. It’s not a drug. It’s not something you take to have a particular experience, but it’s a lifestyle. It’s a commitment to trying to be here in the eye of the storm, no matter what’s going on, you’re calm and the eye of the storm. It doesn’t mean the storm stops. Storms don’t stop. Don’t even think about it. There’s no way to stop the storm, but there is a way to sit at peace in the eye of the storm and that’s the practice, and that takes a little time, a little commitment, a little sincerity of heart and wholeheartedness and a little discipline, little by little, but that’s only to let let ourselves into that eye of the storm. It’s not that it’s something new. We know what it is. All we have to do is let go to be there. So, it’s always here, the eye of the storm, but we’re caught in the turbulence.
So, good luck and keep, you’re doing good. I know it doesn’t feel like they listen. Aside from everything else, this is a really hard time. Come on. This is unique in the whole world. There’s never been a time like this before, so don’t expect that you can just sit around and be at ease, just like that. This is a really hard time. We have no escapes that we’re used to. There’s no way to release pressure or energy. We’re stuck in our own minds, in our own rooms and our own houses. This is a very hard time. And so, let’s give ourselves some credit for just making it from one day to the next, even if we’re a little bruised.
Sometimes it’s enough to be.
Yeah, that’s right. Thank you. Definitely. Take care.
Q: I first became acquainted with your music in 2017. I saw you in New York City, at your concert in Tarrytown the night before your birthday, I believe that was last year, and then this past a year. And I started going to kirtan after that concert. And my background is I was a professional musician for decades and I am also a teacher of music now.
What do you play?
Keyboards and I teach voice, and now I’m getting into percussion because I’ve been playing kirtans using my djembe drums, and so I’ve been on this journey with kirtan for a couple of years now, and I’ve worked very hard to let go of the musician-side of me in kirtan and try to get deeper into that, and I’m just finishing up now a Bhakti Immersion course that I’m doing with Elizabeth Padma Anandama , who was at the Taos Ashram in New Mexico for three years. She asked us, and here comes my question, she asked us in the course, in the beginning, “Who are you?”
I’ve done enough work to know that who I am is not what I do. So, I’ve let go of those things and stripped those away. I am having, I’m struggling with answering that question, and then three weeks into the course, she asked the question again and I’m like, “I can tell you how, what other people tell me, I am. Me, myself, I struggle with that.”
So, I was just wondering, because it’s, I do have difficulty journaling and I’m still struggling with that part of our chapter, to answer that question. So, I would appreciate any thoughts you have on that.
Well, you can’t answer that question on the same level it was asked. Who you are is beyond words, beyond thoughts, beyond form, beyond emotions. It’s your true nature, your soul, so to speak, and there’s no words for that. I don’t know what she expects you to say, maybe nothing, maybe, but you are not who you think you are, and every thought is a prison, and you can’t think yourself out of a prison made of thought.
So, just sing and shut the fuck up. That’s all you have to do. This is not an intellectual trip. You don’t have to know anything. You don’t have to figure anything out. Who you are is who you are, and you’re always right here, but we don’t know what that is. We don’t experience that directly because our awareness is flowing out through our senses and our thoughts and we’re just not paying attention. We don’t know where to look. So, just keep singing and let go.
When you sing, you pay attention to the sound of the name you’re singing. Anything else is not the name. Let go and come back again and again. Ramana Maharshi said, “Asking the mind, or the ego, to kill the mind is like asking the thief to be the policeman. There will be a lot of investigation, but no arrest will ever be made.”
So, it’s not something you figure out here. Just keep singing, and in 30 or 40,000 lifetimes, you’ll get an answer. Just keep singing. That’ll save you from everything and it will save you from you, for Christ’s sake. That’s the thing. Just keep taking the name. That’s all you have to do, and you’ll notice when you’re not. Then you go. Then you come back.
How do you ever come back from a thought? Havve you ever asked yourself that? How does it happen? You’re singing, “Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram… Oh this is so great.” And then 20 minutes later you realize, “Oh, wait, I’ve been thinking about that new djembe I was going to get.”
So how did that thought end and how did you recognize that you were gone? No answers. It just happened based on the seeds you yourself have planted in your own past. That moment of wake up came naturally because you planted those seeds to wake up and so that thought had a certain amount of energy, and that energy was dissipated. “Oh, I’m back.”
Then you come back to the name again, but here’s the kicker. You didn’t do that. You’re thinking about your djembe. You didn’t wake yourself up. Your soul woke you up, which is not who you think you are. Who you really are brought you back. So, then you come back to the name, because the repetition of the name is, as Maharajji said, “Everything will be accomplished through the repetition of the name.”
So, invocation, devotion is our true nature? We don’t have to manufacture it. We don’t have to manipulate our emotions. We have to be who we are, which comes from letting go. Many things will happen. Many feelings will arise naturally from within. That’s fine, but don’t try to make something happen. That’s a waste of time and worse. You’re hurting yourself. That’s like beating yourself with a whip. You think you’re doing the right thing, but you’re not.
So anyway, when you figure out who you are, let me know. Okay?
All right. I will. Thank you.
There won’t be any internet 40,000 lifetimes from now butfind a way.
Q: So, I am 56 years young and I first met Ram Dass in 1986 as a little 22, 23 years-old, and the Darshan came immediately for me. I had a dream of Baba that night, the first night that I met Ram Dass, and I told Ram Dass about it the next day and just got the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen in my entire life. So, that’s sort of what kicked off my journey, and I spent many years still connected to Ram Dass, but also seeking other stuff to fill me up. I’m also a devotee to Amma, Ammachi, and deeply immersed in Bhakti at this point in my life.
I had a medical happening about a month ago and it resulted in what I can only describe as having the lens of truth, instead of the lens of my mind, and everything I’m studying and looking at now, I’m no longer seeking. I’m just consuming it beautifully and understanding everything… not everything, but when I see truth or feel truth, it’s like I have this knowing that I never had before, and all of this energy flowing through me, now that I’ve come back into my body, is, it’s a lot for my husband. It’s a lot for the people around me and I am intending for it to be able to integrate so that I can walk normally in the world again, if that makes any sense. At this point, I’m just, I’m loving every moment that I’m here. And I guess really what I’m asking is, when something this huge of an experience is perceived and felt and shifted me so much, how do I integrate that into the relationships that I want to nurture and how do I walk in the world in this space without, I don’t know, without? That’s it. Thank you.
Well, all I can tell you is that if a person feels loved, everything’s okay. So, you’re seeing your husband and you’re seeing other people as somebody else outside of yourself, and you’re thinking a lot about yourself, and I would try to drop that kind of stuff and just love everybody. And you won’t have any problems whatsoever. Don’t hang on to whatever experience you had. It was, at the best, it was a gift and it’s not permanent. That state of mind or that vision was given to you, but it’s not yours. You don’t have to hold onto it, and you don’t need to be afraid of it dissipating. You don’t need to be thinking about yourself at all. You need to be thinking about others and loving everyone.
Maharajji said, “It’s better to love everyone than to try to figure it out.”
So that’s what I would say. There’s a lot of “me, me, me” in your question and your presentation and that’s the only problem I hear, is that there’s just a little bit too much “me” in there. It’s not about you. It’s not about you. It’s not about how you feel. It’s not about where you’ve been. It’s not about where you’re going. It’s about how you treat everything that appears in your consciousness, every being that arrives in your consciousness.
So,if your husband felt loved, he’d be at ease, but he doesn’t. So, you have to examine that situation carefully and see what that’s about. I have no idea what it’s about, but you have to figure out what it’s about and see if it’s something that is because… see where that situation is within you and what you can do, what you want to do, and what you have to do about it, because it’s causing you dis-ease as well. Unease. So, whatever vision you had didn’t do away with you yet. There’s plenty of you around and that’s okay. But so now just love everyone, feed everyone and remember God. But that’s the deal. Nothing else is required. You don’t have to hold on to anything. You don’t have to push anything away and don’t give up whatever practice you were doing or have been doing, or should be doing.
I have been chanting the Chalisa for many years and it is really integrated now. It feels like home. It brings me to the void, that space of just lightness and perhaps in my original excitement of asking my question, it’s not that you misinterpreted, I don’t think that you did. You probably heard me a lot. I am very much in that space of loving everyone and everything almost to a fault, it feels like. I’m just in a really sensitive, open, loving space. I’m growing food. I live on a farm and growing food and helping to feed my friends and myself and my family I feel like, very integrated in a lot of it, but it just still feels like a lot, and I want to bring that energy more in the space of emanating from me.
You know, I don’t like that. I don’t like you saying, “I want to do this. I want to do that.”
Where do you get off wanting anything?
That’s so true.
It’s not your job, girl. You just be present with everyone. Love everyone, and whatever happens. People ask me all the time, like, “How do I chat with people? I want to share my chanting with the world.”
I said, “Are you sick? Is there’s something wrong with you?”
Why should you want anything? It’s not, you it’s God doing it. So just turn it off. Yeah, get rid of that.
Get it out of my head. Get it out of my head. I am in my head without adult supervision on a regular basis.
Well, there are very few adults in the world.
Thank you so much. Ram Ram.
Ram Ram.
