Ram dass quotes

One of the ego's favorite paths of resistance is to fill you with doubt.

The dark night of the soul is when you have lost the flavor of life but have not yet gained the fullness of divinity. So it is that we must weather that dark time, the period of transformation when what is familiar has been taken away and the new richness is not yet ours.

The shadow is the greatest teacher for how to come to the light.

So somebody comes along and gets to me. They get me angry or uptight or they awaken some desire in me, wow am I delighted. They got me. And that’s my work on myself. If I am angry with you because your behavior doesn’t fill my model of how you should be, that’s my problem for having models. No expectations, no upset. If you are a liar and a cheat, that’s your Karma. If I’m cheated, that’s my work on myself.

If you meditate regularly, even when you don't feel like it, you will make great gains, for it will allow you to see how your thoughts impose limits on you. Your resistances to meditation are your mental prisons in miniature.

When you know how to listen everyone is the guru

The point isn't to deny our Egos, but to extricate ourselves from our exclusive preoccupation with them.

You have everything in you that Buddha has, that Christ has. You've got it all. But only when you start to acknowledge it is it going to get interesting. Your problem is you're afraid to acknowledge your own beauty. You're too busy holding on to your own unworthiness. You'd rather be a schnook sitting before some great man. That fits in more with who you think you are. Well, enough already. I sit before you and I look and I see your beauty, even if you don't.

The ego is frightened by death, because ego is part of the incarnation and ends with it. That is why we learn to identify with our soul, as the soul continues after death. For the soul, death is just another moment.

In the depth of the soul is the atman, the oversoul. And that oversoul is really love and compassion, peace, joy, and wisdom.

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

Institutions don't change the world in fundamental ways. The way the world changes is heart to heart to heart by individuals, not by institutions.

The spiritual journey is not about acquiring something outside yourself, rather, you are penetrating deep layers and veils to return to the deepest truth of your own being.

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

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.

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

So your first job is to work on yourself. The greatest thing you can do for another human being is to get your own house in order and find your true spiritual heart.

You've been somebody long enough. You spent the first half of your life becoming somebody. Now you can work on becoming nobody, which is really somebody. For when you become nobody there is no tension, no pretense, no one trying to be anyone or anything. The natural state of the mind shines through unobstructed - and the natural state of the mind is pure love.

Meditation means to be constantly extricating yourself from the clinging of mind. By letting go of even the thought 'I,' and 'me' what is left? There is nowhere to stand and no one to stand there. No separation anywhere. Pure awareness. Neither this, nor that. Just clarity and being.

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

At the moment when there's nothing more to lose, the Ego breaks open - and then we see who we are behind who we thought we were.

The greatest thing you can do for another being is to provide the unconditional love that comes from making contact with that place in them that is beyond conditions, which is just pure consciousness, pure essence. That is, once we acknowledge each other as existing, just being here, just being, then each of us is free to change optimally. If I can just love you because here we are, then you are free to grow as you need to grow.

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

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

The final awakening is the embracing of the darkness into the light. That means embracing our humanity as well as our divinity. What we go from is being born into our humanity, sleep walking for a long time, until we awaken and start to taste our divinity. And then want to finally get free. We see as long as we grab at our divinity and push away our humanity we aren’t free. If you want to be free, you can’t push away anything. You have to embrace it all. It’s all God.

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.

Old age spiritualizes people naturally

This is the pathless path - returning to where you were initially before you got lost. The deepest truth in you is where the journey leads - shedding, like taking off layers of an onion, until you come to your essence. The key to the spiritual journey is not acquiring something outside of yourself. Rather it is shedding the veils to come back to the deepest truth of your being.

Nature is really important because it's a manifestation of love that hasn't been run through human minds.

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

As you look at many people's lives, you see that their suffering is in a way gratifying, for they are comfortable in it. They make their lives a living hell, but a familiar one.

Within the spiritual journey you understand that suffering becomes something that has been given to you to show you where your mind is still stuck. It’s a vehicle to help you go to work. That’s why it’s called grace.

If you feel a sense of social responsibility, first of all keep working on yourself. Being peaceful yourself is the first step if you want to live in a peaceful universe.

Without remaining open to change , we can not remain open to life

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

It's very hard to grow, because it's difficult to let go of the models of ourselves in which we've invested so heavily.

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.

Our thinking minds deprive us of the happiness that comes when we are living fully in the moment.

The intellect is a beautiful servant but a terrible master. Intellect is the power tool of our separateness. The intuitive, compassionate heart is the doorway to our unity.

All you can do for another person is be an environment in which if they wanted to come up for air, they could.

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

Suffering only shows where you are attached. That is why, to those on the path, suffering is grace.

Our journey is about being more deeply involved in life, and yet less attached to it.

Emotions are like waves. Watch them disappear in the distance on the vast calm ocean.

You are joy, wisdom, peace, compassion, and love

The World is perfect as it is, including my desire to change it

The universe is made up of experiences that are designed to burn out your attachment, your clinging, to pleasure, to pain, to fear, to all of it. And as long as there is a place where you’re vulnerable, the universe will find a way to confront you with it.

The God within is your Spiritual Heart. Your Soul. And in that individual Soul, rests God- rests the One. Go into your soul and your heart-space which can be Awareness, Love, Compassion, etc…and just BE your heart-space. BE your Soul so that you can LOVE unconditionally.

When we practice dying, we are learning to identify less with Ego and more with Soul

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.

Look at the people you don't love and see them as an exercise for you to open your heart.

Suffering lets us see where are attachments are - and that helps us get free.

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

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

If I'm going to die, the best way to prepare is to quiet my mind and open my heart. If I'm going to live, the best way to prepare for it is to quiet my mind and open my heart.

As you dissolve into love, your ego fades. You’re not thinking about loving; you’re just being love, radiating like the sun.

Consciousness equals energy = love = awareness = light = wisdom = beauty = truth = purity. It's all the same trip.

When you are completely identified with your thinking mind you are totally separate from everything else in the universe.

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.

The reality we live in is selected by our conceptual definitions. You and I may be in the same physical space, but each of us will see it as entirely different.

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

The art of life is to stay wide open and be vulnerable, yet at the same time to sit with the mystery and the awe and with the unbearable pain - to just be with it all.

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

True compassion arises out of the plane of consciousness where I AM you.

The pain of the world will sear and break our hearts because we can no longer keep them closed. We've seen too much now. To some degree or other, we have surrendered into service and are willing to pay the price of compassion. But with it comes the joy of a single, caring act. With it comes the honor of participating in a generous process in which one rises each day and does what one can. With it comes the simple, singular grace of being an instrument of Love, in whatever form, to whatever end.

Ask yourself: Where am I? Answer: Here. Ask yourself: What time is it? Answer: Now. Say it until you can hear it.

We're sitting under the tree of our thinking minds, wondering why we're not getting any sunshine!

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

Maharajji told me, 'Give up anger and I'll help you.' I found that love freed me back into the ocean of love and my righteous anger didn't do that. And I would rather be free than right.

This is the pathless path. Where the journey leads is to the deepest truth in you. It is really just returning to where you were initially before you got lost.

Let the natural flow of the universe, course through your being, and harmonize your soul.

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

Unconditional love really exists in each of us. It is part of our deep inner being. It is not so much an active emotion as a state of being. It's not 'I love you' for this or that reason, not 'I love you if you love me.' It's love for no reason, love without an object.

The sooner one develops compassion in this journey, the better. Compassion lets us appreciate that each individual is doing what he or she must do, and that there is no reason to judge another person or oneself. You merely do what you can to further your own awakening.

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.

Real happiness lies in that which never comes nor goes, but simply is.

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

All that you seek is already within you. In Hinduism it is called the Atman, in Buddhism the pure Buddha-Mind. Christ said, 'the kingdom of heaven is within you.' Quakers call it the ‘still small voice within.’ This is the space of full awareness that is in harmony with all the universe, and thus is wisdom itself.

We're all just walking each other home.

If you want to cure the world, don't emanate fear - emanate love.

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

Behind everyone's learned behaviors and odd eccentricities lurks a soul, ready to make contact if only coaxed out through a crack in the ego.

After meditating for some years, I began to see the patterns of my own behavior. As you quiet your mind, you begin to see the nature of your own resistance more clearly, struggles, inner dialogues, the way in which you procrastinate and develop passive resistance against life. As you cultivate the witness, things change. You don't have to change them. Things just change.

We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not.

Suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise.

Faith is what is left after all your beliefs have been blown to hell.

You are loved just for being who you are, just for existing. You don't have to do anything to earn it. Your shortcomings, your lack of self-esteem, physical perfection, or social and economic success- none of that matters. No one can take this love away from you, and it will always be here.

The most exquisite paradox; as soon as you give it all up, you can have it all.

Don't take yourself so personally.

The interesting question is, how do you put yourself in a position so that you can allow ‘what is’ to be. The enemy turns out to be the creation of mind. Because when you are just in the moment, doing what you are doing, there is no fear. The fear is when you stand back to think about it. The fear is not in the actions. The fear is in the thought about the actions.

When you look back at your own life, you see ... the sufferings you went through, each time you would have avoided it if you possibly could. And yet, when you look at the depth of your character now, isn't a part of that a product of those experiences? Weren't those experiences part of what created the depth of your inner being?

You can't build joy on a feeling of self-loathing.

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.

Turn your melodrama into a mellow drama.

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.

The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back. In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight. When we see the Beloved in each person, it's like walking through a garden, watching flowers bloom all around us.

In India when we meet and part we often say, "Namaste," which means: I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides; I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides; I honor the place in you of love, of light, of truth, of peace. I honor the place within you where if you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us�.. "Namaste."

Don’t compare your path with anybody else’s. Your path is unique to you.

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

Truth waits for eyes unclouded by longing.

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

Thoughts are going by like a river; awareness simply is.

Most of us are convinced that we are our egos, which is who we think we are. The ego is part of our incarnation. It dies with the body, which is why we are so afraid of death. Death scares the hell out of who you think you are, especially if you think you are this body.

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

Be patient. You'll know when it's time for you to wake up and move ahead.

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

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

Creativity springs from the yearning to be the fullness of who you are.

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

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

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.

The Ego ages... the Soul evolves... and to the Awareness, nothing happened!

When someone we love dies, we get so busy mourning what died that we ignore what didn't.

If you think you’re enlightened go spend a week with your family.

My work as a human being is to quiet my mind, open my heart and do what I can to relieve the suffering with as much wisdom, skill, whatever I got.

Treat everyone you meet like God in drag.

So you work on yourself as a gift to other human beings. Then you use every situation you have with other human beings as a vehicle to work on yourself by seeing where you get stuck-where you push, where you grab, where you judge, where you do all the stuff.

As we grow in our consciousness.. there will be more compassion and more love. And then... the barriers between people.. between religions.. and between nations will begin to fall.

I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are

Witness your thoughts. Your thoughts are attachments.

When you are in the presence of unconditional love, that is the optimum environment for your heart to open, because you feel safe, because you realize nobody wants anything from you. The minute that heart opens, you are once again letting in the flow. And that flow is where you experience God.

Each person tells you who they think they are, and who they think you are.

Inspiration is God making contact with itself.

The way we regard death is critical to the way we experience life. When your fear of death changes, the way you live your life changes.

Watch how your mind judges. Judgment comes, in part, out of your own fear. You judge other people because you're not comfortable in your own being. By judging, you find out where you stand in relation to other people. The judging mind is very divisive. It separates. Separation closes your heart. If you close your heart to someone, you are perpetuating your suffering and theirs. Shifting out of judgment means learning to appreciate your predicament and their predicament with an open heart instead of judging. Then you can allow yourself and others to just be, without separation.