Ram Dass
“Lessons on Gratitude from Ram Dass” is locked Lessons on Gratitude from Ram Dass
One of the spiritual lessons I have found quite useful over the years is that there is a great deal of difference between pain and suffering. Pain is a sensation in the body or in our psychological bodies. Suffering comes only because of the way we choose to interpret the pain as something NOT GOOD – and therefore Not GOD!
I’ve worked with many people who, in the process of aging, have discovered that one of the most poignant ways we learn is through our bodies when they experience illness or pain. I’m reminded of the story about one of the founders of Unity, Myrtle Fillmore. She cured herself by blessing and thanking each organ of her body, praising intelligence within and encouraging it to come to new life! Rather than complain about the pain, she looked for ways to feel gratitude.
Before we can actually begin to be grateful for what we are experiencing in our bodies, we first need to accept what is. There’s a difference between healing and curing. Healing is KNOWING there is nothing wrong!! – Curing is about fixing something so that it can meet our expectation of health or wholeness in any area of our life, remembering that our expectation may not be the highest HEALING!
I have a friend who exemplifies this perfectly. Recently, I got a letter from Jan – who has been mostly confined to bed in utter pain for the past several years. She wrote a long litany of all the reasons she was grateful I was in her life these past few years. It was very moving for me and I’m so asserted that it was healing for her as well.
I recently read a book that reminded me of this once again. Many of you may know Richard Alpert who is more popularly known as RAM DASS. He’s been a leader in the human potential movement since the psychedelic 60’s with Timothy Leary. He then spent years following a guru from India, Maharajii– and doing teachings on higher levels of awareness all over the world. He wrote several books – one of the most famous being Be Here Now. In the last few years, he had a stroke that left him paralyzed and one of his more recent books is on coping with Aging, Change and Dying. It’s called Still Here. Profound reading!
Ram Dass and Jan got me thinking a lot about the aging process and the opportunities it provides for living either in gratitude or complaint.
Ram Dass talks of several areas of suffering of those who are aging. (I could argue that most of these apply to all of us.) He calls these the usual suspects.
a) Memory Lapse – many people experience bouts of what they call senility (isn’t that one of our greatest fears – losing our minds?) But in the stories he tells, every person feels a sense of gratitude for finally they are able to live in the moment! Could that be what memory loss is attempting to teach us? It’s worth pondering.
b) Loneliness – learn to be quiet and be the witness of it with no denial of feelings. Feel what is. Be aware of your desire to cling to old experiences – or to the desire to relieve the loneliness by whatever means possible..
How to be grateful when you feel lonely? Know that loneliness is not aloneness – which is a moment for the Soul – be quiet, meditate, get to know yourself,
We are never alone. Reach out to someone nearby through your soul who may be feeling the same way. Through compassion and a genuine wish for the suffering of others to cease. When it can’t worry about itself, the ego becomes powerless to feed its own fears. Loneliness can become one of our greatest connections to God and to one another.
c) Embarrassment — Ram Dass at 63 tried to jump on a stage and wound up with his leg mangled and bleeding. He was almost ready to pass out. What he said of this experience was that it gave him the opportunity to let go of self-consciousness. He advises that when we allow ourselves to BECOME the embarrassment and give it complete domination then we can actually feel gratitude rather than complaint.
d) Powerlessness – when we feel powerless, we are actually viewing the world as a foe rather than friend. So, one secret of spiritual practice is that our limits may become our strengths if we learn to work with them skillfully. As our bodies slow down, we can use this change to increase our mindfulness. I invite you this week to look at what you think is your major limitation – and for ONE WEEK – see if you can find how it is really your greatest strength. Our cross is really our crown.
e) Loss of role/meaning – before the ego attaches meaning to itself, we simply ARE.
The way to recognize meaning in life is to KNOW that Life is bigger than whatever we are going through at the moment. Get a lifelong perspective – or better yet, a many lifelong perspective. If you think of the evolution of a soul, it MUST go through many phases…like the earth –that had to go through eruption – and major breakdown for each new breakthrough – like the caterpillar becoming the butterfly.
How to be grateful? See everything, even sadness and depression, if that is your experience, as part of the soul’s evolution. If we look back on our lives, we’ll always see that depression was a precursor to amazing spiritual growth. Mindfulness keeps life in perspective.
How we face situations in life really determines what those situations can offer us.
If you find that it’s difficult to be grateful in the moment, at least rake the time each night to go over the day – Forgive and release that which you would like to have been different – Letting it go every day insures that you’ll not be carrying it for years to come.
There’s a greeting that I put on all my phone messages that I’d like to leave with you today – it’s something we can choose each moment – Have a Great and GRATEFUL day!!
Ram Dass – Lessons on Gratitude
One of the spiritual lessons I have found quite useful over the years is that there is a great deal of difference between pain and suffering. Pain is a sensation in the body or in our psychological bodies. Suffering comes only because of the way we choose to interpret the pain as something NOT GOOD – and therefore Not GOD!
I’ve worked with many people who, in the process of aging, have discovered that one of the most poignant ways we learn is through our bodies when they experience illness or pain. I’m reminded of the story about one of the founders of Unity, Myrtle Fillmore. She cured herself by blessing and thanking each organ of her body, praising intelligence within and encouraging it to come to new life! Rather than complain about the pain, she looked for ways to feel gratitude.
Before we can actually begin to be grateful for what we are experiencing in our bodies, we first need to accept what is. There’s a difference between healing and curing. Healing is KNOWING there is nothing wrong!! – Curing is about fixing something so that it can meet our expectation of health or wholeness in any area of our life, remembering that our expectation may not be the highest HEALING!
I have a friend who exemplifies this perfectly. Recently, I got a letter from Jan – who has been mostly confined to bed in utter pain for the past several years. She wrote a long litany of all the reasons she was grateful I was in her life these past few years. It was very moving for me and I’m so asserted that it was healing for her as well.
I recently read a book that reminded me of this once again. Many of you may know Richard Alpert who is more popularly known as RAM DASS. He’s been a leader in the human potential movement since the psychedelic 60’s with Timothy Leary. He then spent years following a guru from India, Maharajii– and doing teachings on higher levels of awareness all over the world. He wrote several books – one of the most famous being Be Here Now. In the last few years, he had a stroke that left him paralyzed and one of his more recent books is on coping with Aging, Change and Dying. It’s called Still Here. Profound reading!
Ram Dass and Jan got me thinking a lot about the aging process and the opportunities it provides for living either in gratitude or complaint.
Ram Dass talks of several areas of suffering of those who are aging. (I could argue that most of these apply to all of us.) He calls these the usual suspects.
a) Memory Lapse – many people experience bouts of what they call senility (isn’t that one of our greatest fears – losing our minds?) But in the stories he tells, every person feels a sense of gratitude for finally they are able to live in the moment! Could that be what memory loss is attempting to teach us? It’s worth pondering.
b) Loneliness – learn to be quiet and be the witness of it with no denial of feelings. Feel what is. Be aware of your desire to cling to old experiences – or to the desire to relieve the loneliness by whatever means possible..
How to be grateful when you feel lonely? Know that loneliness is not aloneness – which is a moment for the Soul – be quiet, meditate, get to know yourself,
We are never alone. Reach out to someone nearby through your soul who may be feeling the same way. Through compassion and a genuine wish for the suffering of others to cease. When it can’t worry about itself, the ego becomes powerless to feed its own fears. Loneliness can become one of our greatest connections to God and to one another.
c) Embarrassment — Ram Dass at 63 tried to jump on a stage and wound up with his leg mangled and bleeding. He was almost ready to pass out. What he said of this experience was that it gave him the opportunity to let go of self-consciousness. He advises that when we allow ourselves to BECOME the embarrassment and give it complete domination then we can actually feel gratitude rather than complaint.
d) Powerlessness – when we feel powerless, we are actually viewing the world as a foe rather than friend. So, one secret of spiritual practice is that our limits may become our strengths if we learn to work with them skillfully. As our bodies slow down, we can use this change to increase our mindfulness. I invite you this week to look at what you think is your major limitation – and for ONE WEEK – see if you can find how it is really your greatest strength. Our cross is really our crown.
e) Loss of role/meaning – before the ego attaches meaning to itself, we simply ARE.
The way to recognize meaning in life is to KNOW that Life is bigger than whatever we are going through at the moment. Get a lifelong perspective – or better yet, a many lifelong perspective. If you think of the evolution of a soul, it MUST go through many phases…like the earth –that had to go through eruption – and major breakdown for each new breakthrough – like the caterpillar becoming the butterfly.
How to be grateful? See everything, even sadness and depression, if that is your experience, as part of the soul’s evolution. If we look back on our lives, we’ll always see that depression was a precursor to amazing spiritual growth. Mindfulness keeps life in perspective.
How we face situations in life really determines what those situations can offer us.
If you find that it’s difficult to be grateful in the moment, at least rake the time each night to go over the day – Forgive and release that which you would like to have been different – Letting it go every day insures that you’ll not be carrying it for years to come.
There’s a greeting that I put on all my phone messages that I’d like to leave with you today – it’s something we can choose each moment – Have a Great and GRATEFUL day!!
Conscious Connections and Aging
Although relationships change in all stages of life, it often seems harder to find new connections to replace the ones we lose as we age. This effort to stave off loneliness and to replace missing connections can sometimes take extreme forms, as in a case I read about in which a Japanese man hired a surrogate couple with a baby to visit his elderly parents because he didn’t have time. The old people spent the day pretending that these strangers were their actual family, talking about their “grandchild’s” health, how much the baby had grown, and so on. Before the surrogate couple left, kisses were exchanged and promises to visit again soon, and they were paid by the son an equivalent of $1,150 for their time and thespian abilities.
“Now and Then” photographed by Betina La Plante
Caring for someone else is one way to combat loneliness. In response to this need, some older people have taken it upon themselves to be of service. Laura Huxley created Project Caress, a public space located in a shopping center where mothers and fathers can leave their babies while they shop. With a registered child-car professional in attendance, older people volunteer to come in to hold and cuddle the babies. The babies and the elders alike benefit from the contact. Although we may yearn to be quieter as we age, human beings have an inborn need for social contact that must be honored if we are not to suffer, and part of our conscious-aging curriculum must include finding ways to satisfy this yearning. We long to reassure ourselves that other hearts exist; to affirm our own existence through the presence of others. An older couple I know – he’s a psychiatrist, she’s a meditation teacher – have a big, beautiful home, where they raised a large family. After the children moved away and started families of their own, my friends were left rattling around in their big house, until one day they said, “This is a waste! Here we are in this wonderful house – why don’t we fix up the basement and move down there, and give one of our kids and his family the upper floor?” Their son and his family really benefitted by having the house, and my friends enjoyed the cross-generational companionship.
Through a strange set of circumstances, another friend of mine found herself starting a family she never intended to have. At the age of 69, she became the sole caregiver for a six-year old child. Here was a woman traveling the world to give seminars, writing books, being an intellectual, who suddenly had her life “interrupted” by a child she could not turn away. For the first few years, she bemoaned her fate, but slowly this changed, and she and the child are doing fine. She even admits that her life is better for this unexpected change of plan.
Even though, as Thich Nhat Hanh reminded us, we can not betogether through technology, cyberspace can afford us a different way of maintaining connection in older age. No longer bounded by geography, we can meet in the brave new world of the Internet and spend time as companions in virtual reality. A woman speaking on National Public Radio recently reported how she’d used her computer and her internet contacts with people all around the country to get through her depression and loneliness after the death of her husband. A year later, she’s become the one who is counseling and supporting other recent widows in a chat group on the web. A friend of mine who is approaching seventy is teaching her still older next-door neighbor, a shut-in, how to surf the internet. My friend, who loves gardens, shares (among other things) a spirited international internet chat group on gardening. I foresee that computers will play an increasingly important role in engaging elders like me in educational and social participation, relieving us of the hassle of moving our arthritis-ridden, aging bodies around so much.
These sort of creative solutions to how we want to live as we get older are often more available than we think. Unfortunately, many of us are too caught up in the cult of independence to see these possibilities; either we don’t wish to be a burden on others, or we don’t wish to be burdened by others. Either way, we find ourselves more isolated than we need to be. In speaking with hundreds of elderly people, I’ve noticed a distant pattern of loneliness among those vaunting their own independence. We become Eleanor Rigbys, waiting at the windows of life. The “achievement” of living on one’s own is diminished by the sense of being ignored or left behind. This diminishment can become a barrier standing between our egos and the rest of the world, increasingly solid and hard to cross. Whether through shame over our own aging, or through fear of dependency, we should be vigilant about this tendency to isolate ourselves as we get older. To offset it, we might seek out community centers and other meeting places where peers congregate, or consider alternative living arrangements such as assisted-living centers, spiritual communities, and multiple-age communities set up specifically for bringing people of all generations together.
– Excerpt from Still Here by Ram Dass
