Building a bridge from separation to connection, RamDev offers practices for staying grounded, working with emotions like grief, and transmuting fear into love.
Can the chaos, fear, and separation we feel in our incarnations be the fueling motivation for deepening practice? RamDev explores the very pertinent spiritual through-line of how we can move from separation to connectedness. Diving into the grief, fear, politics, and tribalism that promote feelings of separation, RamDev offers grounded and embodied practices and solutions for working with emotions and mindfully transmuting fear into love.
This episode is part of an ongoing conversation between Dale and his students around liberating ourselves from fear and healing ourselves through presence and practice. Learn more about Dale’s workshops at livingdying.org.
“One could say that a lot of spiritual work is about transmuting feelings of separation into feelings of connectedness.” – RamDev
Conscious Grief, Politics, & Tribalism
Through the lens of the separation and suffering brought on by the pandemic, RamDev highlights the various ways in which grief expresses itself through our beings. Touching on the intense tribalism stoked through electoral politics, he shines a light on the place in us where we are all one connected consciousness, despite our outward differences. Exploring conscious grief work, RamDev shares how we can begin to heal our suffering by making conscious that which makes us feel separate.
“Grief is really all of the negative emotions that we get caught in in response to feeling separate. So that, grief is not only sadness; it’s anger, fear, confusion, anxiety. It’s what is arising, almost always unconsciously, out of a place of feeling separate from ourselves, people around us, and God.” – RamDev
Begin to move from separation to connection by healing internalized tendencies of tribalism, on Ep. 77 of The Indie Spiritualist
Staying Grounded, Fear to Love (18:42)
Before introducing practices we can use to move from feelings of separation to the experience of connected oneness, RamDev answers his audience’s questions on grief and separation. From the foundation of being grounded in one’s being, he introduces heart practices and dissolving practices aimed at fostering deeper connections to the Earth, the self, the heart, others, presence, God, and space. From this lens, he explains grounding as the foundational support which helps transmute fear into love.
“Grounding is the exact antidote to shock, attack, fear, anxiety; and you can use your relationship with the news, your relationship with feelings of isolation—whatever’s happening in your life that throws you into your mind—can that be the motivation for becoming grounded?” – RamDev
RamDev offers insights into staying grounded and centered in the compassionate, spacious heart, on Ep. 51 of Healing at the Edge
From Separation to Connection (43:20)
Describing how embodied inquiry into difficult repetitive emotions can become a gateway to connection, RamDev elucidates how we can use our negative emotions, like anger, as guides and a means to awaken. To close the podcast, he introduces more practices for moving from separation to connection, involving: centering, conscious grief work, loving-kindness, presence, embodied mindfulness, God, guru yoga, the Dark Mother, space, and nonduality.
“What does it feel like to be angry? The more you get into it, it will reveal a deeper emotion, which is almost always sadness. If you go into the sadness enough, almost always it’s going to be fear underneath that. So that, any difficult emotion—particularly a repetitive one—is a gateway. You start peeling away the layers to the core issue of seperation. So, anger can be a freeing emotion if you’re connected.” – RamDev
For more RamDev elucidating the nuances of mindfully working with deep emotions, check out Ep. 34 of Healing at the Edge
