You are creating a structure to be able to support the fullness of our humanity. And different people have different unique opportunities to play in that. The art is to listen for the part you play. When one person writes a book of poetry, is that book of poetry any less of a contribution to the wellbeing of humanity than somebody who’s out on the line fighting the fire?
Now, the fire people will say, “Look, it’s important that you fight fire. Don’t worry about the poetry book.” But if not poetry, then something very precious is lost that humanity needs for its own feeding as well. So there are all these balances and you don’t need to judge, but rather tune to hear what part you play. And which part you play has to do with your skills, your capacities, your opportunities, and the environment you live in.
The yearnings and desires are all part of the play. And the job is to keep quieting the mind to stand back further and go within to hear more clearly the way it all works. And then out of that comes the next action.
You may go sit on a rock by the Rio Grande and watch the light on the back of a Robin, and you’re sitting there and you’re feeling like, “What difference does it make?” and then something comes into you and says, “This isn’t totally fulfilling.” And then you leave that and you go back to someplace and the telephone rings and somebody says, “Will you do this?” and you don’t know why, but you say, “Yeah, I’ll do it.” It starts a whole other course of life.
I have no idea why I do the things I do. I trust my intuitive wisdom. I get many letters. Some I answer, some I don’t. There’s no way I can decide what’s the worst and what’s the best. Sometimes I need to get into the hot tub. Sometimes I need to pick up the phone and offer to do a benefit.
I’m allowing myself more and more to trust my intuitive wisdom rather than my analytic mind as to how I should do it. Cause the more analytical mind can’t really handle the complexity of the situation so you go from moment to moment just listening. The fact that you had that job and then gave it up for this job, that’s all part of what’s feeding into this moment. Then you’re looking for the dream, and then the model of the dream, and finally you keep letting go of the model into just what is.
I was at a point where my father was ill and I needed some help. This fellow called and he had read ‘Miracle of Love‘. He wrote me a letter saying he had read it and cried and wanted to meet somebody who had known Maharajji, and could he come see me. He came over and saw me and we sat and talked for several hours. I asked him what he did and he said he had been working with mentally disabled adults for much of his adult livelihood, but was kind of tired from that, and didn’t know what he wanted to do. I told him I was going to Burma to study meditation and needed somebody to hang out with my father and my stepmother, and would he consider?
He said yeah, he would do it, and at first my step mother said, “He’s too weird,” but then he hung and she mellowed and pretty soon got cancer. The she died and he took over. He took care of my father until my father died. And that was three, four years. He had no plan when he came to see me about Maharajji, of doing that thing. I had no plan of having somebody like that. Dad had no plan. And there they were, and their whole lives all changed and served and worked just that way. Who knows whether the next message comes at the laundromat or whether the message comes through… you know, who knows?
-Ram Dass
