Perfect Lessons

Question: You say every life situation is a perfect lesson. How is that so?

Ram Dass: The universe is made up of experiences that are designed to burn out our reactivity, which is our attachment, our clinging, to pain, to pleasure, to fear, to all of it. And as long as there are places where we’re vulnerable, the universe will find ways to confront us with them. That’s the way the dance is designed.

In truth, there are millions and millions of stimuli that we are not even noticing, that go by, in every plane of existence, all the time. The reason we don’t notice or react to them is because we have no attachment to them. They don’t stir our desire system. Our desires affect our perception. Each of us is living in our own universe, created out of our projected attachments. That’s what we mean when we say, “You create your own universe.”We are creating that universe because of our attachments, which can also be avoidances and fears.

As we develop spiritually and see how it all is, more and more we keep consuming and neutralizing our own reactivity. Each time we see ourselves reacting we’re saying, “Right, and this situation too, and this one too, Tat Tvam Asi, and that also, and that also, and that also.” Gradually the attachments start to lose their pull and to fall away. We get so that we’re perfectly willing to do whatever we do – and to do it perfectly and without attachment. It’s like Mahatma Gandhi gets put in jail and they give him a lice-infested uniform and tell him to clean the latrines, and it’s a whole mess. And he walks up to the head of the guards and he says, in total truth, “Thank you.” He’s not putting them on or up-leveling them. He’s saying, “There’s a teaching here, and I’m getting it; thank you.” What’s bizarre is that we get to the point where somebody lays a heavy trip on us and we get caught, and then we see through our caughtness and we say, “Thank you.” We may not say it aloud because it’s too cute. But we feel, Thank you. People come up and are violent or angry or write nasty letters or whatever they do to express their frustration or anger or competition, and all I can say is thanks.

Excerpt from Grist for the Mill: Awakening to Oneness

Image by Denny Franzkowiak from Pixabay

14 thoughts on “Perfect Lessons”

  1. I always love reading your stuff. I am Aunt or probably Uncle Henry. Will try to contribute one of these days. Always be here(there) now

    Reply
  2. When before the Goddess, I don’t say anything about anything. If something happens, it is by Her grace and If nothing happens, it is by Her grace.

    Reply
  3. When before the Goddess, I don’t say anything about anything. If something happens, it is by Her grace and if nothing happens, it is by Her grace.

    Reply
  4. I don’t have money to donate or purchase but I want you to know how much appreciative your words in Grist for the Mill are to me. In time my efforts to improve my financial status will occur, meanwhile I am observing how it unfolds. I will share on Facebook. Thank you for your understanding at this time.

    Reply
  5. I’ve meditated on all things spiritual (which is everything) for the past 35 yrs and new the split milisecond (I know it’s not a real word but you get the gist) I ‘ran across you’ that I could learn so much from you! It’s that ‘knowing’ that told me to get you book ‘Be Here Now’. My beautiful daughter just gave me a new/used kindle and than had to teach me that I may just have to ‘buy’ your book. She’s a librarian and I’m an…English teacher, which is not what I am at all ey?!…that since I cannot find the book in any library (which I have access to many) and then store it on my ‘cloud account’ it wouldn’t do the first thing that bothered me, do I want to take up that much space on my little kindle, and then sometimes you just have to buy a book if it cannot be found. I still have this odd belief that I should be able to find it easily everywhere, anywhere, inside of me, in a flower, you get what I’m saying, I hope. However, I can look at you, I watched ‘Fierce Grace’ and can see that I can learn so much from you. I’m hungry for this book. Don’t know exactly why, but I am. Love

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  6. Thank you. I love that you post this often. It never gets old, I could re-read it a thousand times. ♥ Grateful for your sharing.

    Reply
  7. Desire oozes forth from the weep holes of Lacking.
    By this mechanism you are (continually) either: not getting exactly what you wanted, or you are getting exactly what you didn’t want.

    Wealth is not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.

    Reply

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