I just finished listening to a great webinar called “How to Help People Connect to Loving Awareness: Expanding Our Capacity to Give and Receive Unconditional Love.”, with Ruth Buczynski interviewing Ram Dass. I had heard about Ram Dass, but never had the opportunity to hear him speak. It was very moving and inspiring to listen to him talk. I’ve recapped some of the most important points that Dass spoke about below.
Ram Dass has endured a lot of adversity, including a stroke in his life. “I saw the stroke as grace” he said, although the stroke kept him from golf, his sports car and his cello. Dass says that grace helped him to go inside, to work within. He explained that grace taught him not to be time-bound. He said that spiritual work is so much in the present. He did not compare what he could do in the past with what he could do now. Dass found that his mind was causing him trouble because it was focusing on uncomfortable things—pain and problems and things he couldn’t do. He says that most people are dazzled by their senses, which keeps them from finding the jewel inside. I found it inspiring to learn that he could reinterpret this seemingly adverse experience of a stroke into an opportunity for deep spiritual growth.
Dass believes that all of us have an unimaginable depth for unconditional love. He talks about the spiritual heart as a connection to our soul. He advises us to go heart to heart, soul to soul, not role to role. If we want peace and love and connection, we must go inside to the heart and soul level, which is who we really are. He recommends that we take our finger to the middle of our chest and repeat saying “I am loving-awareness, I am love-awareness,” which then becomes an identity within us. Dass said that if we stay away from the ego and focus on “I am loving awareness,” we will feel this love rather than the anxiety, the fear, the inadequacy, and the pain.
Although I cannot do justice to his presentation in this post, I feel inspired to look inward. If he is able to see the blessings from having had a stroke, we, too, can strive to love unconditionally, make peace with the adversities in our own lives, and find peace within. I highly recommend you hear him or read some of his books, including Be Here Now, Be Love Now, and Still Here.