How can we use our hearts as agents for social change?

Human Hearts

In the beginning, when I used to sit by the bed of dying AIDS patients, I’d come to their door in my usual, “Aren’t I holy” disguise to see this person. I was visiting the moribund, you know, but then I realized that I was depriving them of what human hearts can do for one another. So then I became like Superman going into the telephone booth as I grasped the doorknob of their room, galumphing along. Now when I put my hand on their doorknob I immediately become a soul. I start to shift my identity, or perspective in myself, into the soul.

You see, I have learned that you can’t see a soul until you can be one.

Heart-to-Heart Resuscitation

I would get there and push open the door, and who was waiting for me but another soul. I reflected with this other soul about how this incarnation has been hard, and by doing that my heart mirrored their soul, and they could get the feeling inside of “I am a soul.” So really it’s like I was doing heart-to-heart resuscitation.

You know, I think the heart is the only institution that I trust as an agent for social change. It’s not the big organization, not the government, not the family. It comes down to one human heart seeing another, to another, to another, to another. That’s social change.

How can we use our hearts?

When you go deep enough in yourself, you will find silence, peace, love, wisdom, and compassion. It’s in all of us. All you need to do is plumb the depths of your heart. I’m not talking about the beating heart, the boom boom boom heart. I’m talking about the heart space.

When you get into your awareness, it’s like your awareness goes out through your eyes, ears, all your senses, and the thinking mind. Your awareness and my awareness are God’s awareness. You sit in your awareness and it begins to no longer have any physical correlation. You can’t find awareness in the brain. It’s in the heart, apart from the thinking mind.

-Ram Dass