This month was Ram Dass’ 94th birthday. Happy birthday Ram Dass! Not everyday, but when I’m open to it and can escape the busyness of life, I can feel him here. A timeless presence, a glow, some added space in my mind, like a much needed extension on a too-small house. He reminds me that there’s much more to this moment than whatever might be on my mind at the time.
RD himself didn’t care too much about birthdays. He said he lived in the soul, not the ego, and that souls are timeless. They don’t have birthdays!
Egos are caught up with the storylines of their existence. Identified with our ego- believing we are the one who’s thinking the thoughts we’re thinking- we believe we are the individual we imagine ourselves to be, with all of our ups and downs, glories and mishaps, our smallness and our moments of expanse. We believe in ‘us and them,’ a world of divisions, in a separateness that is our primal wound.
Souls on the other hand don’t begin, or end. They are always here and now. As a soul, Ram Dass said, he witnessed the mellow-drama of life, of his own incarnation. He witnessed all the ups and downs and didn’t get caught by them. Rather, as a soul, he loved himself, and everyone, and everything. He loved it all unconditionally. But how did he get there? How did Ram Dass go from believing he was his ego to experiencing himself as a soul?
I think that’s a crucial question.
Because without it, we’re left with helpless thoughts like, “Wow, Ram Dass was a great guy. Too bad he’s not here now.” But we have power- the power to investigate what brought him to his soul, so we can reach in the same direction in our own lives, opening up our little, tiny houses to be big, expansive ones inside ourselves.
Whether you believe in the soul or not, the space that Ram Dass described exists in all of us. I felt it when I was with him, and he tried to teach me to inhabit that space as well. With direct and repeated instruction, he kept pointing me towards that extra room inside myself, no matter how many times I insisted on returning to my everyday, narrow mental landscape. His very being exuded a loving, relaxed spaciousness that was contagiously yummy. Being by his side was like swimming in an ocean, the ocean of the soul.
Ram Dass told me that by being here now, and witnessing my thoughts and the events of my life, I could cross the shore from the ego to the soul. As a Bhakti Yogi, he also told me that the heartspace is a stepping stone to the soul. The more we come into Love, the closer we are to merely slipping off the edge into the soul. I feel this when I play cello with Krishna Das. Maharaji’s love is so present in the mantras and bhav that my heart opens more and more. The soul is just a hop skip and a jump away.
But it’s easy to lose sight of all of this magic in the midst of a busy life, each busy day, each busy second. Magic takes time. Spiritual practice- even mindfulness practice without a spiritual framework- opens up a doorway to the magical realm of being, far away from the land of doing. It’s in that space that the soul comes knocking on our door.
When we rush through everything and are constantly thinking while doing- even while washing dishes we’re planning the next thing- we miss the moment. Because souls exist in the here and now, we miss our opportunity to be alive. To be who we truly are.
Everyday now, I invite myself into this new home, a space in which I’m present to the magic of the moment. ‘Be here now’ was Ram Dass’ motto for a reason. It’s the cornerstone of the whole spiritual house. If we’re not here and now, where are we? It takes a kind of reeducation though, the kind that only regular practice can give us, a patient and persistent rewiring of our whole system, and this goes against the grain of the world’s busy madness.
But we can do it. If Ram Dass did it, and so many others throughout the ages have done it, we can do it too. Life is waiting for us. The moment is waiting for us, inviting us to feel it, to be present in it, to live fully in our full selves, and to find home.
To be here now.
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Beautiful drawing by Jeremy Hoffeld