Exploring core healing practices, RamDev shares on motivation, embodied mindfulness, inspiration, trust, self-compassion, and turning suffering into joy.
Find out more about RamDev’s work at the Living/Dying Project: livingdying.org
Examining Our Motivation // Embodied Mindfulness
RamDev opens the session by exploring the core healing practice of ‘examining our motivation’—sharing how we can revivify stale practice by remembering the preciousness of the moment and contemplating, “What is it I really want?” Next, he elucidates the core healing practice of embodied mindfulness – moving past the content to settling into somatic experience. Through this lens, he explains how we can use emotions—like fear, guilt, and shame—as messages from the Divine Mother to see where in the body and chakras we are unbalanced.
“Can you trust the surrender into the body rather than needing to try to figure it out?” – RamDev Dale Borglum
Ram Dass examines our motives for spiritual practice, on Ep. 147 of Here & Now
Life, Death, Inspiration, & Trust // ‘Purify & Wait for Grace’ Meditation (13:13)
What inspires you to be alive? Noting the overly burdensome and mundane parts of existence that we all must deal with, RamDev talks life, death, suffering, trust, and inspiration. From here, he shares how to center beyond the struggle, letting oneself completely into the present moment by taking Ram Dass’ instructions: “purify and waiting for grace.” Next, RamDev leads a guided practice around motivation, grounding, and embodiment. He follows this up with an LSD story.
“Are we practicing so we can run away from suffering and push it away? Or are we practicing because we want the truth? If we really want the truth, then suffering is gonna be grace. Suffering is showing us in fine perfect detail where your heart is still closed, where you’re not trusting the Dharma, where you’re not trusting that Maharaj-ji is always in communion with you.” – RamDev Dale Borglum
RamDev shares a Dharma talk & meditation on presence, trust, & grace, on Ep. 39 of Healing at the Edge
Self-Compassion & Self-Mercy // Surrendering into Non-Practice (28:01)
Opening the floor to audience questions, RamDev touches on the importance of self-compassion and self-mercy, how anxiety is actually the Divine Mother, and how meditation practice isn’t about fixing ourselves—it’s about realizing there’s nowhere to go. From here, he talks about devotion, the Divine Mother, and “offering your heart as a vehicle to transform cosmic suffering into joy.” To close, he shares more healing tips; like, if you can’t feel compassion for someone else, feel compassion for the part of you that can’t feel compassion.
“As long as you’re using practice to feel that ‘I’m broken and I need to fix my brokenness to get to this unbroken thing I read about in the books’ – you’re stuck, you’re spinning your wheels in the mud, you’re not gonna go anywhere. Meditation is really about realizing that there’s nowhere to go.” – RamDev Dale Borglum
