Walking the path of the Heart, Ram Dass shares the hungry ghost pitfalls veiling the unity behind our separateness and invites us into the proverbial ‘hot tub’ of Maharajji’s unconditional love.
In this unique dharma talk floating from deep, dreamy inquiry, to rich, humorous, and lively stories of darshans with Maharajji in India, Ram Dass illuminates the nuanced path of love, highlighting the addictive pitfalls in our habitual relationships with it, and inviting us into the unconditional unity behind our separateness.
“Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.” – Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
The Soul Land Music Series: Songs & Stories Inspired by Ram Dass continues– join us for the spring season of virtual concerts, Q&A sessions, and community!
Path of the Heart: Pitfalls & Hungry Ghosts
Opening the dharma session, Ram Dass shares quotes and stories to stretch the mind and open the heart, colloquially inviting us all to sit back and ‘let them run through…like Chinese food.’ From this dreamy space of inquiry, Ram Dass outlines the path of love as the path of the heart, emotion, relationship and dualism taking us into the essence of oneness. Marking the pitfalls and traps posed when working with emotions, Ram Dass illuminates the hungry ghost scaffolding we build around our relationship with love.
“The predicament with loving is the power of the addiction of the practice of loving somebody, of getting so caught in the relationship that you can’t ever arrive at the essence of dwelling in love. Imagine that you are cut off in your heart from love, so you feel hungry. What that hunger is, is the hunger to come home, to be at peace, to be feeling at one in the universe, where lover and Beloved merge. It’s the place to feel fulfilled, fully in the moment.” – Ram Dass
Join Ram Dass for an honest and deep elucidation of the promises and pitfalls of the spiritual path, on Ep. 34 of Here & Now
Ram Dass’ Hot Tub of Love: Unity Behind Dualism (11:55)
Imagining love as one of his favorite things—a big hot tub—Ram Dass invites us, through a devotional lens, to go beyond the dualism of ‘you,’ and ‘I,’ and into the warm percolating hot tub water of the unity of ‘we.’ When we touch that space of oneness behind our separateness; all the negative states—like fear, desperation, and addiction—naturally fall away because the quality of love has no time, no space, was never born, and will never die.
“When you hear that statement that, ‘You are my key to the place in myself where I am indeed love,’ you see that the spiritual practices of devotion are designed to move you from, ‘I love you,’ to ‘We are in love together.'” – Ram Dass
For a humorous Ram Dass story on if it’s dhamically justified for a yogi like himself to spend money on a big hot tub, check out Ep. 82 of Here & Now
Love Everyone & Tell the Truth: Maharajji & Unconditional Love (22:33)
Offering a rich and humorous telling of darshans in India where Maharajji instructed him, to “Love Everyone,” and “Tell the Truth,” Ram Dass reconciles these two seemingly contradictory directions, stretching our understanding of unconditional love beyond the plane of form and personality.
“One of the traps I saw I was caught in, was the trap of righteousness that I used to justify my anger. But I saw that love freed me back into the ocean, and that anger didn’t, and that I would rather be free than right.” – Ram Dass
Feel the gravitational pull of the centripetal force of love, as Larry Brilliant & Mirabai Bush love everyone & tell the truth, on Ep. 3 of Walking Each Other Home
Source images via Marina Dekhnik and peterschreiber.media