Remembering Ram Dass
“Let me start with the word “love” for a moment. I think there is a transformation that goes on in one’s conception of the term “love.” And I think one changes from seeing it as a verb, to seeing it as a state of being.
And you move much more towards what would be called Christ-love, that is, the state of being where one “is” love. One is like a light that emits, and one is a loving being.
Consciousness and energy are an identity, and similarly with those identities is the term love. That is, that love and consciousness are one and the same thing. So that as you get into a higher state of consciousness you come closer to being in love.
That doesn’t mean in interpersonal love. It means being – love.
Now if you and I love or fall into love and I say, “She really turns me on. I love her,” from this model what i see is happening is that I’m saying, “You are a…….,” in the imprinting literature, “You are a superordinate key stimulus that is eliciting an innate response mechanism.”
Or I could say it in a more general sense, saying that “You’re turning me on.” And you’re turning me on to a place inside myself that is love. So I am experiencing what it means to “be in love.”
And I’m saying I am in love with you.
I am in love with my connection to the place in me that is love, is the way I would now say it in this Western framework…”
Ram Dass concludes:
“The game of enlightenment starts from exactly where you are at this moment, and therefore, if you have an existing social-emotional-sexual contract with another human being, that’s where it starts.
To say, “Well, I’ve got to go do my work on myself, I can’t afford you anymore” leaves a ripping which ultimately you’ve got to rectify. There’s no doubt about it.
You’ve got to work from where you are now. You just can’t walk out, walk away from anything, any part of your life. You’ve got to bring it all into harmony at every new level.”
(from a 1971 lecture at the Menninger Foundation)
I hope these words from Ram Dass, a wonderful teacher who passed away recently, will ignite more love in your heart.
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