Who are you? What are you doing here? In this classic talk about identity and attachment, Ram Dass asks where you could possibly stand in a world filled with pain and suffering to ‘eat it like it is?’
“The signs point to Armageddon. It looks like it’s really hit the fan. Where could you stand that you could ‘eat is like it is?’ Or you could love it as it is? Where could you possibly stand? Where could you allow that it is what it is? What perspective, what vector view would you need to have? Who would you be if you were seeing it that way?” – Ram Dass
In this talk from Austin, Texas, in the early 1990’s:
- Ram Dass recalls a family saying from his youth, “Eat it like it is,” and asks how we can possibly apply it to the current world filled with pain and suffering.
- Exploring the nature of identity, Ram Dass talks about how we have to become somebody in order to become nobody. He discusses his experiences with expanded states of mind and how the game shifted from how to get high to wondering why he came down.
- Ram Dass talks about how the impeccable warrior is someone who exists on all planes simultaneously. He explores the nature of attachment and reads from Swami Ram Tirth, who helps us understand there is a place we can stand where we can see everything as the unfolding of law. This is the place where we can ‘eat it like it is.’
“You go from sequential to simultaneous. There is nowhere where you aren’t. For that to happen, however, you’ve got to allow the converse: there is nowhere where you are. That’s why we’re in the business of becoming nobody special. Because the minute you’re somebody, you’re standing somewhere. And the minute you’re standing somewhere, you’re afraid, because you’re protecting your little space. What this dance is about is like jumping out of an airplane and you have no parachute, but there’s no earth. Okay? It’s all free form from here on.” – Ram Dass
