Polishing The Mirror Ram Dass Quotes

The art of listening comes from a quiet mind and an open heart.

When somebody provokes your anger, the only reason you get angry is because you’re holding on to how you think something is supposed to be. You’re denying how it is. Then you see it’s the expectations of your own mind that are creating your own hell. When you get frustrated because something isn’t the way you thought it would be, examine the way you thought, not just the thing that frustrates you. You’ll see that a lot of your emotional suffering is created by your models of how you think the universe should be and your inability to allow it to be as it is.

The spiritual journey is not about acquiring something outside yourself. Rather, you are penetrating the layers and veils to return to the deepest truth of your own being.

Relationships only work in a spiritual sense when you and I really see that we are one.

That’s who we all are on this path, spiritual family and friends. It’s just one big family. We’re all relatives until we realize we’re really all the same and there’s only one of us—one loving awareness. May you be one in that love.

to him, to Krishna, to God. To use your daily life and work as a conscious spiritual path means relinquishing your attachment to the fruits of the actions, to how they come out. Instead of doing it for a reward or a result, you do your work as an offering, out of love for God. Through love for God, your work becomes an expression of devotion,

The art of spiritual growth has to do with how quickly you recognize attachments and how quickly you can release them.

That Bhagavad Gita instruction to be unattached to the fruits of your actions is the key. If you are a parent raising a child, don’t get attached to the act of raising the child. That doesn’t mean you’re not a loving, active parent. Your job is to love and nurture, feed and clothe, take care and guard the safety of the child, and guide him or her with your moral compass. But how the child turns out is how the child turns out. Ultimately he or she is not your child; who they turn out to be is up to God and their own karma. Your

Instead of filling your mind with the daily news, fill it with stuff that helps you become more conscious, that liberates you. As you become more aware of what gets you to God and what doesn’t, you will naturally let go of what doesn’t. That’s purification. You do it to get to God, not for the sake of being pure.

You can stay in touch with your soul by dwelling in the moment.

In The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment, Thaddeus Golas says, “You never have to change what you see, only the way you see it.

When you are in the presence of unconditional love, you are in the optimum environment for your heart to open.

So your first job is to work on yourself. The greatest thing you can do for another human being is to get your own house in order and find your true spiritual heart.

The power of God is within me. The grace of God surrounds me.

you are ever again the wave     sweeping through all things     RAINER MARIA RILKE, BOOK OF HOURS

Whatever you need to do to get ready to die, you should have done it a minute ago. Do it now and get ready. Every moment is the moment you die. Every breath is the first and last. A conscious being holds on nowhere.

You judge other people because you’re not comfortable in your own being. By judging, you find out where you stand in relation to other people. The judging mind is very divisive. It separates. Separation closes your heart.

Satsang

From a personality point of view, you develop judgment, but from the sou's point of view, you develop appreciation.

The art of life is to stay wide open and be vulnerable, yet at the same time to sit with the mystery and the awe and with the unbearable pain—to just be with it all.

Each of us has our own unique karmic predicament, our own unique work to do. The predicament is that there is nowhere to stand, because our identification with the person who has the karma is changing too. As you develop the witness and identify more with your spiritual heart, karma just is.

Aldous Huxley reminds us, “The body is always in time, the spirit is always timeless and the psyche is an amphibious creature compelled by the laws of man’s being to associate itself to some extent with its body, but capable, if it so desires, of experiencing and being identified with its spirit.

It’s not the crow’s feet under your eyes that make you old, Or the gray in your hair, I’m told. But when your mind makes a contract your body can’t fill, You’re over the hill, brother, you’re over the hill.

Part of the process of awakening is recognizing that the realities we thought were absolute are only relative. All you have to do is shift from one reality to another once, and your attachment to what you thought was real starts to collapse. Once the seed of awakening sprouts in you, there’s no choice—there’s no turning back.

you see it.” Gurdjieff, a great spiritual teacher who taught in Europe and America in the early decades of the twentieth century, noted that if you think you’re free and you don’t know you are in prison, you can’t escape. Gurdjieff saw us as being in a prison of our own habits of mind. Unless we understand how we are conditioned by our desires, we remain stuck in the reality they create, like a television program with an ad that keeps repeating over and over, implanting a subliminal message while we watch the show. BEYOND THOUGHT In the West we get rewarded for rational knowledge and learning. But only when you see that the assumptions you’ve been working under are not valid,

The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers and cities; but to know someone here and there who thinks and feels with us, and who, though distant is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.

Inevitably is an excellent word—inevitably means you’re on a train, and the train is going one way, and you’re at the front of the train running as fast as you can toward the back of the train, in the opposite direction from where the train is headed. But it doesn’t matter, because when the train gets to the station, you get there too. That’s inevitably. That’s my life.

If somebody at work is a problem for you, they’re not the one who needs to change. If someone is a problem for you, it’s you who needs to change. If you feel they’re causing you trouble, that’s your problem. It’s on you. Your job is to clear yourself.

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy. RABINDRANATH TAGORE

Motivations and desires affect our perceptions. We don’t necessarily see things as they are. We see them as we are.

The caterpillar does not become a flying caterpillar; it morphs into a butterfly.

Hafiz the poet said, “O thou who are trying to learn the marvel of love from the copybook of reason, I’m very much afraid that you will never really see the point.

The greatest thing you can do for another human being is to get your own house in order and find your true spiritual heart.

Home is where the heart is. Home is the quality of presence. It’s the quality of being. Home is always here.

Faith is not a belief. Beliefs are in the head. Faith is in the heart. Faith comes from within you. You cultivate it by opening your spiritual heart and quieting your mind until you feel your identity with your deeper Self. That opening to the deeper Self, when you have quieted your mind. comes through grace. The qualities of that Self are peace, joy, compassion, wisdom, and love.

As you awaken, you realize that personal karma is just another illusion. The illusion is that this is the only reality. The witness helps you to see that there are choices, different ways to perceive reality.

Satsang is a community of truth seekers. It is a group of people with the shared awareness that there is a spiritual dimension to the universe. Goethe had this beautiful thought: “The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers and cities; but to know someone here and there who thinks and feels with us, and who, though distant is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.

The journey of consciousness is about arriving at a balance in life where you are open to the mystery of it all. You can’t be open when you’re loaded down with a lot of conceptual stuff. In my own consciousness, I watch how long it takes, when an expectation isn’t fulfilled, before I come back again to being in the present moment. How long before I can let go of not getting what I wanted, and just be with what is?

When you experience fear or are unsure about your situation, there’s a beautiful and very powerful mantra you can say: “The power of God is within me. The grace of God surrounds me.” Repeat it to yourself or to a loved one in need. It will protect you. Experience the power of it. It’s like a solid steel shaft that goes through the top of your head right down to the base of your being. Grace will surround you like a force field.

When you get to those edges where you say, “I can’t handle that” or “I’m not going to do that,” take a look at the mindset you are holding onto. There is the root of your suffering. That’s where your mind is in relation to what is.

If somebody asks me, “Ram Dass, are you happy?” I stop and look inside. “Yes, I’m happy.” “Ram Dass, are you sad?” “Yes, I’m sad.” Answering those questions, I realize that all of those feelings are present. Imagine the richness of a moment in which everything is present: the pain of a broken heart, the joy of a new mother holding her baby, the exquisiteness of a rose in bloom, the grief of losing a loved one. This moment has all of that. It is just living truth.

Now isn’t preparation for later. Here and now is it. There is a spaciousness, an acceptance of what is in the moment, that says, “Yes, ah so!” to everything, whether it’s ugly, beautiful, boring, confused, dead, angry, the dark night of the soul, or the brilliant light of the spirit. This is just the way it is. And in just the way it is, is the spirit.

That Bhagavad Gita instruction to be unattached to the fruits of your actions is the key. If you are a parent raising a child, don’t get attached to the act of raising the child. That doesn’t mean you’re not a loving, active parent. Your job is to love and nurture, feed and clothe, take care and guard the safety of the child, and guide him or her with your moral compass. But how the child turns out is how the child turns out. Ultimately he or she is not your child; who they turn out to be is up to God and their own karma. Your attachment, your clinging to how the child is going to turn out, affects every aspect of how you parent. A lot of our anxiety comes because we are attached to how a child is supposed to come out—smart, successful, creative, whatever it is we want for our child. Of course, you parent your child as impeccably as you can. “Parent” is your role to play because that is your dharma, and naturally you become immersed in your role in life. But it is also important to remember you’re a soul playing a role. Who your child is and who you are are not roles.

I HIGHLY SUGGEST YOU CHECK OUT THE FOLLOWING: The book The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell, with Bill Moyers, and the PBS special of the same name. The film Finding Joe is also a good intro to Joey Cambs. Anything by Rob Bell, especially Love Wins and What We Talk About When We Talk About God, and his podcast The RobCast. Anything by Eckhart Tolle, most notably The Power of Now (especially as an audio book) and A New Earth. There are also so many great talks on YouTube. Anything by Richard Rohr, particularly Falling Upward, Everything Belongs, and The Universal Christ, and his audio series The Sermon on the Mount. The podcast The Duncan Trussell Family Hour. Anything by Ram Dass, specifically his audio series Experiments in Truth and Love, Service, Devotion, and the Ultimate Surrender, and his books Grist for the Mill, Polishing the Mirror, Be Love Now, and, when you’re ready, Be Here Now. Also the movies Ram Dass, Going Home; and Dying to Know. Anything by Alan Watts, starting with his audio series You’re It!: On Hiding, Seeking, and Being Found. There’s some amazing content on YouTube as well. And lastly, The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment by Thaddeus Golas.

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy. RABINDRANATH TAGORE Find someone or something that needs help, and help out.