Ram Dass's quotes

 

“We're all just walking each other home.” =========> Just loved this.

“The quieter you become, the more you can hear.”

“We're fascinated by the words--but where we meet is in the silence behind them.”

“It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.”

“The most exquisite paradox… as soon as you give it all up, you can have it all. As long as you want power, you can't have it. The minute you don't want power, you'll have more than you ever dreamed possible.”

“I would like my life to be a statement of love and compassion--and where it isn't, that's where my work lies.”

“The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back.”

“Be here now.”

“In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight.”

“Your problem is you are too busy holding on to your unworthiness.”

“As long as you have certain desires about how it ought to be you can't see how it is.”

“Suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise.”

“The most important aspect of love is not in giving or the receiving: it's in the being. When I need love from others, or need to give love to others, I'm caught in an unstable situation. Being in love, rather than giving or taking love, is the only thing that provides stability. Being in love means seeing the Beloved all around me.”

 

“Treat everyone you meet like God in drag.”

“Let's trade in all our judging for appreciating. Let's lay down our righteousness and just be together.”

“What you meet in another being is the projection of your own level of evolution.”

“The next message you need is always right where you are.”

“The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal. It can't be organized or regulated. It isn't true that everyone should follow one path. Listen to your own truth.”

“Only that in you which is me can hear what I'm saying.”

“We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we are so deeply interconnected with one another.”

“Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story, instead of the actor in it.”

“A feeling of aversion or attachment toward something is your clue that there's work to be done.”

“I would say that the thrust of my life has been initially about getting free, and then realizing that my freedom is not independent of everybody else. Then I am arriving at that circle where one works on oneself as a gift to other people so that one doesn't create more suffering. I help people as a work on myself and I work on myself to help people.”

“Every religion is the product of the conceptual mind attempting to describe the mystery.”

“We're here to awaken from the illusion of separateness”

“I'm not interested in being a "lover." I'm interested in only being love.”

“If you think you're free, there's no escape possible.”

“Learn to watch your drama unfold while at the same time knowing you are more than your drama.”

“The game is not about becoming somebody, it's about becoming nobody.”

“It's all real and it's all illusory:
that's Awareness!”
 

“The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering.”

“Information is just bits of data. Knowledge is putting them together. Wisdom is transcending them.”

“It's very different because the Indians live as if they are their souls and Americans live as if they are their egos.”

“Healing does not mean going back to the way things were before, but rather allowing what is now to move us closer to God.”

“It's only when caterpillarness is done that one becomes a butterfly. That again is part of this paradox. You cannot rip away caterpillarness. The whole trip occurs in an unfolding process of which we have no control.”

“Our whole spiritual transformation brings us to the point where we realize that in our own being, we are enough.”

“Everything in your life is there as a vehicle for your transformation.
Use it!”

“If you think you are enlightened; go home for Thanksgiving.”

“When we see the Beloved in each person, it's like walking through a garden, watching flowers bloom all around us.”

“In our relationships, how much can we allow them to become new, and how much do we cling to what they used to be yesterday?”

“The Ego is an exquisite instrument. Enjoy it, use it--just don't get lost in it.”

“Across planes of consciousness, we have to live with the paradox that opposite things can be simultaneously true.”

“The question we need to ask ourselves is whether there is any place we can stand in ourselves where we can look at all that's happening around us without freaking out, where we can be quiet enough to hear our predicament, and where we can begin to find ways of acting that are at least not contributing to further destabilization.”

“There's much more in any given moment than we usually perceive, and that we ourselves are much more than we usually perceive. When you know that, part of you can stand outside the drama of your life.”

“Suffering is the sandpaper of our incarnation. It does its work of shaping us.”

“All spiritual practices are illusions created by illusionists to escape illusion.”

“Psychedelics helped me to escape.. albeit momentarily.. from the prison of my mind. It over-rode the habit patterns of thought and I was able to taste innocence again. Looking at sensations freshly without the conceptual overly was very profound.”

“Compassion refers to the arising in the heart of the desire to relieve the suffering of all beings.”

“Our interactions with one another reflect a dance between love and fear.”

“By acting compassionately, by helping to restore justice and to encourage peace, we are acknowledging that we are all part of one another.”

“Spiritual practices help us move from identifying with the ego to identifying with the soul. Old age does that for you too. It spiritualizes people naturally.”

“Remember, we are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we're so deeply interconnected with one another. Working on our own consciousness is the most important thing that we are doing at any moment, and being love is the supreme creative act.”

“In mystical traditions, it is one's own readiness that makes experiences exoteric or esoteric.
The secret isn't that you're not being told.
The secret is that you're not able to hear.”

“As one individual changes, the system changes.”

“I see my life as an unfolding set of opportunities to awaken.”

“Our rational minds can never understand what has happened, but our hearts.. if we can keep them open to God, will find their own intuitive way.”

“If you want to be surrounded by Souls, become identified with your Soul.
It takes one to know one!”

“You and I are the force for transformation in the world. We are the consciousness that will define the nature of the reality we are moving into.”

“We're being trained through our incarnations--trained to seek love, trained to seek light, trained to see the grace in suffering.”

“A moment comes when "other" is no longer other.”

“Prolong not the past
Invite not the future
Do not alter your innate wakefulness
Fear not appearances
There in nothing more than this”

“Working on our own consciousness is the most important thing that we are doing at any moment, and being love is a supreme creative act.”

“Inspiration is God making contact with itself.”

“When we're identified with Awareness, we're no longer living in a world of polarities. Everything is present at the same time.”

“The dance goes from realizing that you're separate (which is the awakening) to then trying to find your way back into the totality of which you are not only a part, but which you are.”

“When the heart is open, it's easier for the mind to be turned toward God.”

“Religions are founded by what mystics say when they come back;
but what the mystics say is not the same as what happened to them.”

“Just because you are seeing divine light, experiencing waves of bliss, or conversing with Gods and Goddesses is no reason to not know your zip code.”

“Do what you can on this plane to relieve suffering by constantly working on yourself to be an instrument for the cessation of suffering. To me, that's what the emerging game is all about.”

“What we're seeing "out there" is the projection of where we're at--the projection of the clingings of our minds.”

“You give up not meditating. It's called meditation action. There's no way out of it. Meditation means to be constantly extricating yourself from the clinging of mind.”

“You may protest if you can love the person you are protesting against as much as you love yourself.”

“When you are already in Detroit, you don't have to take a bus to get there.”

“Death has such great importance in this society that it affects everything. I learned from my guru that death is not the enemy, I see it as another moment. Yet it's the end of an incarnation and means going on to other incarnations.”

“I can do nothing for you but work on myself...you can do nothing for me but work on yourself!”

“My life is a creative act--like a painting, or a concerto.”

“I am embarrassed to admit what drew me to psychology. I didn't want to go to medical school. I was getting good grades in psychology and I was charismatic and people in the psychology department liked me. It was as low a level as that.”

“What the word God means is the mystery really. It's the mystery that we face as humans the mystery of existence, of suffering and of death.”

“Early in the journey you wonder how long the journey will take and whether you will make it in this lifetime. Later you will see that where you are going is HERE and you will arrive NOW...so you stop asking.”

“Cosmic humor, especially about your own predicament, is an important part of your journey.”

“Souls love. That’s what souls do. Egos don’t, but souls do. Become a soul, look around, and you’ll be amazed-all the beings around you are souls. Be one, see one. When many people have this heart connection, then we will know that we are all one, we human beings all over the planet. We will be one. One love. And don’t leave out the animals, and trees, and clouds, and galaxies-it’s all one. It’s one energy.”

“Now is now. Are you going to be here or not?”

“The cosmic humor is that if you desire to move mountains and you continue to purify yourself, ultimately you will arrive at the place where you are able to move mountains. But in order to arrive at this position of power you will have had to give up being he-who-wanted-to-move-mountains so that you can be he-who-put-the-mountain-there-in-the-first-place. The humor is that finally when you have the power to move the mountain, you are the person who placed it there--so there the mountain stays.”

“I don't really believe anything I say. Because the nature of my work concerns the spaces between the words, rather than the words themselves.”

“Our journey is about being more deeply involved in Life and yet less attached to it.”

“This getting straight not only applies to people but to things as well, such as favorite music, disliked foods, special treats, avoided places, all your toys, etc. Everything must be rerun through your compassion machine.”

“You two are together in the stars, but not in this world, in this life.”

“It is only when you begin to understand that if you and I are truly in love, if I go to the place in me that is love and you to the place in you that is love we are ‘together’ in Love. We start to understand that what love means is that we are sharing a common state together. That state exists in you and it exists in me.”

“you are ever again the wave     sweeping through all things     RAINER MARIA RILKE, BOOK OF HOURS”