For a long time, I felt I had to sit around judging, because people would come to me and they’d tell me all the things that were freaking them out about their gurus. All the cosmic gossip and I was the holder of this incredible amount of stuff, about everyone’s sex life and everyone’s exploitations. And it got to the point that I was so paranoid because I felt that for me to go to see another holy person, was to feed energy into the system I was entrusted with, it wasn’t my energy. It was total paranoia.
I want to be free to bring my love to everyone. And I think you should feel the same way. I think you should be open to all teachers and all teachings and listen with your heart.
From some, you will have no business, you will have no business with them. Others will pull you. Start to trust yourself. You know. You have everything in you that Buddha has, that Christ has – you’ve got it all. But only when you start to acknowledge it is it going to get interesting.
The problem is you’re afraid to acknowledge your own beauty. You’re too busy holding onto your unworthiness. You’d rather be a schmuck sitting before some great man, that fits in more with who you think you are. Well, enough already. I sit before you because I see your beauty, even if you don’t.
You can see different things in different people depending on your attachments. If you’re horny, second chakra, you’ll see their body. If you’re third chakra, power, you’ll see their personality. If you’re busy being an astral entity, you’ll see their astral identity. If you’ve cleared some of that baggage of individual differences and you experience yourself as a soul who is incarnated and is going through a mad, incredible dance, most bizarre, then you will look at another human being and that same thing, are you in there? I’m in here, far out, how did you get into that one?
As you get more and more empty, even that illusion falls away. And you come to a point when your eyes are open and you see nothing, or you see patterns of energy or you see a homogenous light, or then you see nothing, and then you become nothing, and is that the end?
If I can hear it, when I am right here on this plane, on this plane where there is no clinging, when I’m neither attached to either emptiness nor form, I am free. If I push away the physical existence in order to get into a space, if I’m only comfortable when I’m hanging out with Krishna and I can’t stand my mother-in-law, forget it, I’m trapped. No clinging anywhere and the moment gets so rich, right here it all is, all of it. Every astral plane, physical plane, all the emptiness, all of it is right here. Just a quiet mind hears it all. Initially in your journey, in our journey, we tend to be very eclectic- we take a little here and a little there. With your agitated mind, you go to a meditation course to quiet your mind. For your heart, you go sing kirtan, sing Hare Krishna.
You may feel you’re not assuming your karma yogic responsibilities in the world, you go out and you serve your fellow man and relieve suffering. You get your heart, get your mind, get your body together, you go study Tai Chi or whatever. And each of those methods we use are on the surface – for all of those methods will take you all the way to this moment, every one of those. But they didn’t draw you particularly because for the most part they weren’t your way.
For there is for every individual, a root, a lineage, it’s a function of your Karma, it’s called your Dharma, your way through, your way to be in harmony with it all. And that includes your practices and all of it. Finally you find your lineage, you get drawn, you say, “I tried this but I still want to go back to that one, I hate it, but I keep going back.” Or, “I love it, I just keep getting pulled, I can’t get away from it.”
And you acknowledge your root, you don’t have to deal with your intellect, it has nothing to do with your intellect. The root doesn’t care if your intellect acknowledges it or not. It’s like people say, “Are you my guru?” First of all, I’m not a guru, but second of all, that question, it’s really none of your business.
The only question is, “Does your guru know you?” Not, “Do you know your guru?” That’s what you should worry about. And if you are a pure seeker, your guru knows you. And if you aren’t, what difference does it make? You reach and your guru sees. Remember that in the middle of the night Buddha would look out over all Buddha fields to see whose hand was raised. Like, who’s ready?
-Ram Dass
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