#whyimeditate

[niteclubgirl]

Why I meditate. 🧘🏾‍♀️ #lifeafterOm #vibrationalalignment #flow #whyimeditate #namasteॐ #grounding #clarity #connectedness #reminder4myself #lucidity #cleansing #holdingmyselfaccountable #vibratehigherdaily #meditate🙏 #intentionalliving #quietingthemind #allowspaceforwonder #remainingteachable

[urgencynetwork]

#BeHereNow: Ram Dass and Social Action

Ram Dass has assumed multiple identities throughout his life that have significantly impacted Western academic, spiritual, and cultural spheres. Before he was known as the spiritual teacher and writer Ram Dass, he identified as Dr. Richard Alpert, a prominent Harvard psychologist and psychedelic pioneer who, with Dr. Timothy Leary, launched the mind/body/spirit movement in the 1960s.  Upon traveling to India in 1967, Dr. Richard Alpert was renamed ‘Ram Dass’ by his guru Neem Karoli Baba, meaning “servant of God.”

LSD Guru to Spiritual Guru

At that moment, everything changed. Ram Dass' experimentation with the consciousness-expanding potential of psychedelics, evolved into a spiritual practice of awakening embedded within his mantra "Be Here Now" that permeates his 1971 seminal work of the same title. While Dr. Timothy Leary would transgressively identify as a proponent of the therapeutic and spiritual benefits of LSD, urging the Counter Culture to "turn on, tune in, and drop out," Ram Dass headed to India and returned with spiritual methods that have since significantly altered Western perspectives of consciousness. 

Ram Dass’ spiritual leadership, particularly with his practice of karma yoga and spiritual service, has not only invited millions of souls to access their deep, individuated spiritual practice and path. His teachings also infuse various social causes and efforts with which Ram Dass has been an integral part since the 1960s. Ram Dass has taken up social action endeavors, ranging from incarceration and rehabilitation via spiritual awakening with The Prison-Ashram Project, to conscious dying with the Living/Dying Project.

Read on for personal insight from Ram Dass about fusing spirituality and social action for the last forty years.

Applied Dharma, Collective Freedom

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 I work on myself and I work on myself to help people.

I have to listen - we all have to - to hear how we honor all of the different levels of the games we are in. I'm a member of a family, I'm a member of a nation-state, I'm a member of the community, I have a sexual identity, I have an age identity, a religious identity. It's important to feel how your incarnation takes form through these identities, and to ask yourself, what does it mean to live with integrity within each of those systems?

I've been perfecting that circle for thirty years. It's karma yoga. It's the Bodhisattva vow. My life is about applied dharma. On a socio-political level - I'm a survivor. Once that faith and that connection and that emptiness is strong enough, then I experience looking around for the fields I can play in. That's something that I have had to learn because I used to be so busy seeing the spiritual journey as something that you did by yourself.

Ram Dass and Social Action

I work with AIDS, with business, with government, with teenagers, with people dying of cancer, with blindness. It doesn't matter, because your agenda is always the same. 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.

I have been part of a group called Social Venture Network - exploring the relationship between spirit and business. We have two conferences a year and it has about 500 people involved, including Ben and Jerry's and The Body Shop. Working with dying people is dealing with my issues about death and working with business people is dealing with my issues about money and power.

I have worked with Seva Foundation for many years. Seva has been involved in relieving blindness in India and Nepal.

I have worked with the Living Dying Project, as well as the Zen Hospice Center where we help hospice workers and anyone who works with dying people- we teach them how to be “loving rocks”.

#Be Here Now is hosted by the Love Serve Remember Foundation, aiming to spread the teachings of Ram Dass by raising $50,000 to build a digital media library to preserve his teachings. 

By taking any action on the campaign, you and a friend have the chance to win an all expenses paid trip to Maui for a personal retreat with Ram Dass.