Ram Dass' Here and Now Podcast Ep. 186: The Chain of Reactivity

be here now just be here now [Music] [Music] this is rum das here and now and i'm your host raghu marcus welcome everybody to this next edition and this uh comes from summer of 1989 ramadas i believe he was in lama foundation where be here now was created the book and i think i've been saying this enough that everybody knows this is the 50th anniversary of the publication of be here now in 1971. we were with ram das when he went back the second time many westerners came with him not exactly with him but met up with him uh and he told us how to get there it's really what happened and where where we should go i remember you know there's that great story of ramdas getting a first edition of the book and it had some mistakes in it and maharaji neem karoli baba had him correct those mistakes and he said well i can't it's already you know they already printed a huge thousands of books and he said get it corrected and anyhow the long and short of it was that something happened at the printing um company and they had to abort the printing for some mistake that happened and they were able to make the ram dust was able to make the change boy was he happy then it was quite a fun drama that was be here now which brings me to mention that we are having a big celebration for uh the publication of be here now also honoring ram das we've developed some wonderful films that we're going to be showing this is october 24th it's in los angeles at the wisdom theater in l.a downtown and um we uh i would give you a url but we are not set yet to uh to even announce it but i'm announcing it because i want to and i just want you all to the the best thing to do is just go to ramdas.org and put your email address in and we'll make that announcement uh shortly and you'll get all the information it's also being live streamed it's a 12-hour event from early on sunday morning october 24th till late at night it will be quite something christian us of course will be there and uh at the concert he'll be there during the day doing a workshop and jack cornfield and trudy goodman will be there i will be there pete holmes is going to do something with me miraby star is going to be there rachel fisher nina rao it's that with the films is son of a summit during the day and then in the evening a concert with christianos and john forte and east forest and justin beretta of glitch mob and nina's going to do the opening invocation so get your email in there and uh it makes and you'll get all the information about this and by the way the other thing that we never really talk about is how you can help in terms of uh getting the word out about the podcasts that we do on be here now network and you know whatever your favorite podcast is do a little review on uh apple that will help broaden uh the base of people who might be interested in which is part of the mission of love serve remember foundation okay ramdas summer 89th so this is this is uh some q and a's that we found that have some great questions and of course wonderful answers from rahm das uh some of this is around well a bunch of it's around attachment and addiction and of course he says the basic route of suffering is clinging of the mind to that which separates us from the one and that causes pain and so we tend to set up a whole bunch of different techniques to feel better to feel okay whether it's a moment of like surfing get out there and transcend that separation and just you and nature of course sex ayahuasca you know there's so many different methods to use and some of them aren't that harmful but they become repetitive and that's what addiction is i had this whole addiction uh i did a podcast on mind rolling with gabor mate very famous psychiatrist from canada who is an expert on a dis addiction yeah i i've said i've told this story before but quickly i thought it was okay you're addicted you're you're shooting up heroin or your alcoholic or sex at you know those he was like no no this is about what are the things you did to soothe yourself when you were very young even from the the pain and suffering whether be within in my case was within my family with my dad we had a lot of issues and i had a lot of fear around it and so we established that my uh heroine was football i got lost in football and canadian football not even you know american football that was a wild um a conversation i had you can find it on mind rolling gabor mate is really great so yes ram das gets into the idea of how to extricate oneself from the chain of reactivity because as we react of course to suffering and to separation we get that hunger that hunger to remove ourselves from the moment if we can just develop a little bit of spaciousness through mindfulness and meditation a little bit of awareness and it gets us deeper so that we start to notice the sequence of this uh drive this hunger to [Music] assuage the pain right and once that happens uh there there is a an opening really i can vouch for it there is an opening where you see how empty uh the the form that you have um inhabited to ease the pain you see how empty that is so really good stuff around addiction there's a question about how to be in a relationship with god and what is god's responsibility well it depends what uh in my through my lens it depends what the path is that you happen to be on and that you move towards by virtue of your personality and your incarnation and what all of the dictates of that are and uh for me uh and ramadas and those of us who went to india it's around bhakti yoga the yoga of love which is begins as duality loving that representative of the divine until you actually merge with it and so as far as i'm concerned it's maharaja's responsibility to help wake us up or it doesn't have to be any maharaji by the way neem karoli baba is is absolutely um part of the universal representative that we need to wake up to and it's it's anybody that is a finished being ramen maharshi and christ and buddha and all of it so it doesn't matter who it is but the the model is just to identify a way in which can one can relate with that i mean god's too big a word for me but i like divine presence and you start to realize that that divine presence is real as maharaji said the guru is not external and does not have to be in a body so it's whatever intuitive force leads you to that particular representative however it manifests itself and then practices that extricate oneself from the strong model of of who you think you are and who you think god is and uh so one i love one thing though he says he talks about the wisdom of nature tuning to the wisdom of nature and i think that that is so uh really really um a simple and easy way for us to connect with that divine presence especially when things are just going awry in our little brains right just get out and take a walk in nature uh what else is he he's dealing with greed um yearning for intimacy is another question and you know that's really interesting obviously all of us that's a primary human thing yearning for intimacy and and with with another being and and once it takes place and we work together consciously and transcend boundaries of separateness and we come into the spirit together that's a wonderful wonderful uh path but very difficult because we tend to put sex out number one you know we're not getting together with anyone unless that thing is going on so there's a little issue there because uh it's very hard to not get lost into self-gratification right if both of us myself and my partner are holding awareness uh holding spaciousness mindfulness then that's a really wonderful path to the divine and i like what uh i i pulled a quote and again this will be repeated when you listen to this which i'm hoping that it'll even make more strong more a much more strong impression he said until you can find the place in yourself that can be at peace without having what you want then you're in the optimum position to get exactly what you want that's a kind of a paradox but it's so true i mean and we've all experienced it once we stop the grasping then things start to flow and uh especially in in this i think is it's a reference for all of what uh ramdas is talking about in in responding to these questions but it's certainly a major reference to an intimacy an intimate relationship yeah self-possessed in a way that we get from ourselves a lot of what we tend to look for in another person that goes a long way to a successful relationship i'm still working it on working on it folks let me tell you so that's it that's uh what's up today and again go to behrnownetwork.com you have all these wonderful podcasts new ones coming all the time we have a psychedelic podcast going to start next month in october this is 2021. so look for that get on the mailing list so you know what we got coming and we shall see you next week on ramdas here and now in dealing with attachments and addictions um i find that at the at the time when i need my practice the most i seem to put it behind me i seem to go for the attachment or the addiction and immediately after the satisfaction the guilt sets in that i didn't go to my practice to get the strength or the the guidance that i needed to bypass the addiction and then i feel uh i feel guilt or sadness that instead of going for the comfort that the practice brings me i now have to deal with the guilt that i bypassed it and like a naughty child i'm coming back and then i go to my practice and i feel the guilt that i didn't go to the practice first how can we get around this when we were born like elizabeth spring dao who was born here yesterday we come into the world we come from being fully at home and feeling that release that comes we have a little shadow of it when we come home at the end of the day those of you that have a home and put your feet up or relax or have a cup of tea or whatever that is that feeling of coming home or coming to a safe space or feeling back at peace or at one and when we get separated from that which and that separation i want to keep reiterating is created by the mind that's what the basic issue of the ignorance that is the root of suffering that the buddha keeps pointing out the basic root of suffering is thought the clinging of the mind to things which separate one from all of it now once that separation has occurred there is incredible pain we can call it being thrown out of the garden of eden we call it original sin whatever you want to call that i mean there are different metaphors within different systems but there is incredible pain and in some profound way all of our actions henceforth are an attempt to return to that being for me under maharaji's blanket or in the heart of god or in the hand or being the one coming back into the one and we develop a whole set of techniques that we say make us feel good make us give us a feeling for the moment of yeah and some of those give us that moment so intensely and the rest of our life is so so much pain of our separateness and so devoid of that feeling that once we find one of those things for example it might be a moment of sexual orgasm it might be a moment of surfing when you transcend the dualism between you and nature it could be when you're doing something like cooking the way you turn into just the joy of the process it could be it could be any number of things it could be any number of things [Music] that when that occurs and it works it's it reinforces the behavior and you start to do that behavior more and more because it feels good it takes away the pain of the separateness and the use of drugs the use of material possessions the use of relationships all of it when you get busy and get obsessed with relationships and wanting to get closer and closer to somebody it is trying to get to the place where you come back into that oneness it is it's that yearning and you can feel it permeate the universe of people's consciousness so when you look at addictions from that point of view you see that it's not like evil it is just an attempt to get back the problem is that most behaviors that get you back is like what maharaji said about drugs he said it will allow you to be in the presence of christ but you can only stay two hours he said it would be better to become christ than visit him and that's what you find out with most addictive things that they give you a short rush but they don't allow you to remain at home they just allow you the taste of it and then the minute you get thrown out because you weren't wearing the wedding garment the minute you go back to heaven but you can't stay because you didn't come in the right way you end up feeling like i did something wrong i'm bad and then that starts a reaction of mind so that you get you come down then you feel guilt i must be bad i should have done something else why didn't i do the practices that would have allowed me to stay there rather than the thing that's short-term because you see your predicament what happens is that the the opportunity for the immediate gratification it's like what's called the in the psychology the choice of the the little candy bar now or the big candy bar later and with little children they'll always grab for the little candy bar now because they want what they can get now they don't they don't have any delay of gratification and spiritual practices compared to having sex or compared to taking coke or something is more like delayed gratification versus immediate gratification so when you start to stand back and see your predicament and see what you're doing there is a way from a spiritual perspective in which you begin with that slight bit of awareness to extricate yourself from the chain of reactivity that we're talking about the chain of reactivity that goes from i'm feeling this hunger and then i'll go for the gratification and then ah and then the coming down and then oh and then i should have done it the other way and then i'm bad and there's a whole chain of thoughts that go on every one of those is just keeping the whole process going and as you develop the spaciousness you start to look at where you can intervene in the process of the sequence that goes on as the awareness gets deeper you intervene at different places in the sequence for example the yearning the hunger starts and like for me for example i can i've had strong addictions to food so that when i am feeling unloved i'll eat and i'll get fat it's a pattern and then i'll hate myself loathing because of my body and so on and i'll go through it now i understand the psychodynamics of that at one level but let's take it from this point of view of the mind for a moment the first place i began to intervene was when manindra my meditation teacher said ramdas don't you see that it's just old karma running off and i began to break in at the point that after i had eaten too much to reduce my anxiety because my mother fed me food when i was upset and i learned that pattern and all that stuff i start to instead of going into i'm no good and revulsion and all the sequence i break the chain at that point and then i just go back into my spiritual practices instead of carrying out that whole sequence i i shortcut there as the witness gets stronger you start to go back in the chain further and further until as the dis the the separateness is starting to come and the feeling of hunger and as you're about to eat you start to notice the fact that you're about to do that and you your mind anticipates the whole sequence and you in a sense begin to see the emptiness of the form you're about to take now if you try to stop it too soon using your mind to stop it there's a residual backlash from it so i hope i'm not condensing this is i'm trying to give a lot of teaching very fast i mean as i understand it as i've learned worked with it that one develops a lot of patience and a lot of gentleness with oneself and [Music] for generally when people come to me with addictions i'm inclined to say start doing spiritual practices start doing the studies that will allow you to see yourself in a new way that will allow you to understand what that hunger is you're feeding in a new way to just get a little different perspective on it don't worry about the addiction it will fall away when it will fall away and when you do it again just notice it and the one the line i always use how poignant i am how poignant the human condition you know i'm so gentle with myself and what i have watched is the patterns of my obsessions and addictions have changed over time there's no doubt about that and yet i didn't deal with them directly head on for the most part because what you see is and this is something that i'm sure i i create a lot of waves in many people including people that i love very dearly that i'm close to i see that a lot of the programs to deal with addiction end up creating a new addiction to being not addicted that is as bad as the addiction itself that i mean when you meet somebody that says i haven't smoked in three years two months ten days and four hours you realize that their mind is as stuck as their mind was stuck in smoking maybe they won't die of cancer they'll probably die of uptightness i mean i i'm being a little facetious but in general i'm saying that dealing with dealing with things that are which you're caught in the minute you start to stop them you invest them in a way and so my suggestion is that you just keep cultivating the practices and every time you don't see when i if i get up in the morning and i got up and i decided to stay in the dream state and not get up to do my sitting that could start a whole sequence of you're no good you'll never get to god but in the time i'm saying you're no good you never get to god i could have been doing mantra and when i realized and i began to sit in meditation and watch the sequence of my behavior i saw that all my recriminations didn't help anything particularly they weren't really functional except trying to make me feel comfortable with myself and the better thing would be the minute i notice that i've lost it or i've gotten caught or i'm stuck or i've just started do something just pick up a holy book do a mantra think of maharaji whatever sing a song i mean i'll start driving to town and i'm going to give a lecture and i start to get uptight okay oh my god do i know what i'm going to talk about you know and it's all it's a neurotic pattern i know it from years back it's my i mean i can give you a whole psychodynamic storyline about what that's about i look at it i think ah there it is at that moment i start sri guru chattanoo and six minutes later i'm in a different space than i was before now you could say from a psychological that's denial and you should work with that but the fact is that thus far what's happening is it's getting less and less and i'm able to hang in here now with very little of that old anxiety that used to be crippling it used to be crippling i've worked with some of it but psychologically but a lot of it is just it's become uninteresting it's just becoming interesting and i just flip gears immediately i flip gears because the minute you get lost in identification with your personality to the exclusion of identification with your soul right that's what's happened you've lost it you've lost it and there are a thousand times each day you lose it and if you get caught in your soul to the exclusion of your personality you lost it equally as much and that's the balance of us as human beings next question this has been quite a process i keep asking questions and then i get my own answer of course that's all i am is your own answer so i keep rewriting my question no doubt if i sit with this question i would get the answer too but my most current question is recognition that i feel like i'm in a codependent relationship with god [Music] [Music] so what that means to me is that all the way that i know uh about relationship about looking outside of myself and efforting and trying to to get someone to want me and to love me and respond to me that the way that i do that in relationship is basically how i see my relationship to god and i don't feel like the way that my personality is organized right now that i can experience god coming back to me wanting me and loving me and accepting me it's just the dynamic that seems to be really strong strongly operating in in me right now and when i think about uh how to do that with relationship i would i would say that my work is to pull back and to not be so outer focused and to let relationship come to me but the question i have in relationship to god it gets a little more nebulous it's not very concrete and i'm wondering how to be in relationship with god and what's god's part what's his role what's his responsibility to me to uh to come in the relationship i think you're demonstrating what you're saying the way in which psychodynamics are reflected in the way in which we perceive the spiritual journey and that you're writing the spiritual journey as a large version of what you're dealing with in the psychodynamics in your personality life and i um um there are a number of ways that um appear to deal with what you're talking about um in in understanding the dynamics of dualism the dualistic practice of experiencing experiencing her as separate from you experiencing god as separate you can project into that which is beyond all forms any form you want so you can project into it the form of a father the form of a judge the form of a rejecter the form of a nun lover the form of a caring person the form of somebody reaching out the form of somebody who's waiting for you to reach out these are all projections of the human mind because god is everything so you're making of it what you wish and it's in a way um you're facing so much that you keep wanting to give it form and the forms you choose to give it are based on the what you need in symbiosis to your own needs and your own separateness and so you always end up with a self-fulfilling prophecy of proving that you are not worthy and not enough and not etc and what i hear in it is the solidity of your identification of yourself with these particular psychodynamics and um so i can hear the way in which the mind is clinging to definitions of self so in one way if i were guiding you i would give you meditation practices to help you extricate yourself from such a strong model of who i am because that strong model of who i am only allows you to meet god in a way that is is symbiotic or complementary to that particular model so that's the filter through which you're meeting god so the question is do you loosen the filter that would be one way of doing it [Music] the fact that you are presenting this question the way you are this is another way i could do it you see is to say that the person who's presenting it isn't exactly the same person who's caught in codependency it's somebody who is noticing the predicament and what i would like to do is align myself with that part of you and say that part of you just notices the whole way in which you're doing what you're doing and sits with it and says look at how i am reducing god to that kind of a partnership and because i keep reminding us of the statement god guru and self are one and the same thing so in a way it's as if the outer part of you your personality is filled with need the inner part of you is filled with the fulfillment of those needs but the outer part of you feels that the inner part of you isn't available because that's part of the outer part of you's model that i'm not good enough to have it you see your predicament i mean you're cutting yourself off from your own inner source and so i think probably there the alternate another way would be the practices things like i am that which is techniques of not feeding the dualistic of god and me because every time you get near relationships you slip into your routines about codependency and all that kind of jazz and and it becomes very dramatic and the other one is to to quiet enough to listen to just the truth of your own inner heart and not turn it into a god he or a god she or a god out there in other words i'm saying that the dualistic practices may not be optimally productive to you at this stage because of the intensity with which you're holding on to your psychodynamic identity okay and rather a way of emptying and tuning and listening and perhaps relating to nature more rather than people personifications i mean i think i might suggest to you something like sitting by a stream for example for a while and just sitting with a stream and being tuning and tuning to the river and tuning to the the wisdom of nature rather than getting into a psychodynamic relationship with god next uh could you talk give some specific techniques about dealing with greed and strong attachments addictions get what you can i've been doing that and it don't work i'm tired of chasing my own tail [Music] the issue with all kinds of it's the same really we were dealing with before the question of addictions is to quiet down enough so that you can begin to appreciate the mechanics of the process so that you can see how it all works not necessarily see the source of it i'm not talking about going back into what it caused it just saying look at it and see what it is and see how [Music] it's interesting i um i will have an addiction and then as my my awareness gets stronger which i'm cultivating through all my practices as my awareness gets stronger i notice that that i still will respond to the desire and the pattern but as i'm in it instead of later on when i see that it didn't work or it didn't give me what i thought it would give me or something and the despair and disillusion in that whole sequence when i'm in it i begin to feel its emptiness because the part of me is in it still milking it for all i can but there's another part of me that i've been cultivating that is just sitting with her and saying lovely isn't it or yeah great awesome and i've watched that awareness as i said before starting to short-circuit the whole process getting back earlier and earlier until as that thing which awakens the greed starts in [Music] it starts to thicken my consciousness it's as if i'm i'm falling out of grace into the desire system the minute you identify with a desire system which is really what starts the whole sequence of greed the minute you identify with the desire you will feel the finiteness of the game you've just narrowed it down you just imprisoned yourself again identification with a desire is imprisoning and yet you have desires and the question is how you can be involved in life with desires and still not be attached to them how you can be fully human with all of the stuff without the identification that that grabs what we're talking about is awareness and awareness at its free sense is this spacious vast thing that includes everything the minute it gets caught in a desire it closes down into i want that and that's all you want is i want that and then all the rest of it is irrelevant i want that you watch a child i want that and if it can't have it such a scream and cry and the minute later it doesn't want it anymore and it's the same with us i mean we're doing the same thing and i've got to the point where i see my desires if i get them fine if i don't get them fine it's interesting if i suffer it's okay that's as interesting as getting what i want and i'm not a masochist about it either i just begin to see that i have been at the mercy of those desire systems all my life of are you getting what you need i mean and people come up and they say i'm not getting what i need out of life and i feel not badly that they're not getting what they need i'm i'm feeling badly that they're so caught in thinking that they need to get what they need because it's one level back it's that identification where the problem is so that i keep feeling that just keep cultivating the spaciousness of awareness and then watch how the awareness keeps getting trapped and you can only do that when there's a little bit of quietness in you that can sort of sit and watch the thing as it's going down and again and again and i'm often i mean i'm not the traditional kind of teacher which advocates renunciation of keeping away from the things i'd say go out and be greedy just bring mindfulness to it and that will you watch after a while see that's why maharaji is useful to me because maharaji as when i talk about my method being guru kripa or grace of the guru it means that his consciousness is present with me all the time if i go into the bathroom and masturbate he's there saying interesting get in a rush is this fun are you really having a good time yeah if i do something for the 40th time that is gratifying but is for basically an empty work of energy he's just sitting there just with ah so with love total love he's not judging me he's not pushing me away i can do that but he's not having that consciousness around me all the time i mean i can feel that when there's an opportunity to have livelihood that suddenly there's a chance to have more money in the scene and i can watch that part of me that thinks i could get a little more money in order to do that i make another human being an object to get that more money from them rather than what is a reasonable thing that allows us to stay us which is called right livelihood uh right livelihood is us money i mean you remember that uncle henry story okay seriously tough how many don't know the uncle henry's turn oh okay i uh oh assuming ten percent a line some years ago we put out a six record album called love serve remember with a beautiful brochure of pictures and artwork and a box and the whole thing was sold mail order for four and a half dollars and uh it was really a beautiful production we put a lot of love and attention into it it had chanting and questions and answers and meditations and the third patriarch of zen and gospel of john in it and stuff was it was wonderful i loved it and my father who's a was the president of a railroad at that moment took a look at it and he says impressive pretty good good quality i said yeah he said 450 that's pretty cheap i said sure is he says you know he couldn't charge more he says if you charged ten dollars with a lot fewer people buy it i said no i said four and a half is what we it cost us to produce plus a reasonable return he says but if you caught if you charge 10 would a lot fewer people buy it i said no probably the same number he says well i don't understand are you against capitalism and i said no i tried to think of how i could explain that to him i said dad you're a lawyer and you've had a lot of cases and i know that you take pretty good fees damn right i do i work hard i said yeah you sure do i said you remember last year you tried that case for uncle henry yeah you worked hard didn't you damn right i worked hard i said i bet you charged him a hell of a fee he said of course not it's uncle henry i said there's my problem if you show me somebody that isn't uncle henry i'll rip him off that's the issue of right livelihood that is the issue of right livelihood that you charge what is enough so that you can look another human being in the eye as a member of the family and say that's a fear thing for you to be paying for this thing and that's finally where you arrive at and when i see myself not doing that because the chance of but i make them into an object in order to do that i watch with i watch the horrible beauty of nature unfolding i see myself doing that and i'm just quiet watching it and i then i watch the karmic effects of it and after a while it's as i'm starting to do it it costs too much it costs too much there are many people who come up to me and say i love you so much can we go to bed together and the funny line that always comes up in me not always but most the time is the funny line that always comes up to often comes up to me is we can't afford it because the karmic effects of it will be too great because the amount of attachment inside of us the way we're doing it can you hear the issue okay next question so keep on trucking but yeah exactly just be greedy yeah um uh i had a question but i got so obsessed with it and i know that pattern so i'd start doing the shoe roms and then i fell into a sleep and in the dream you came in and told me i didn't need to ask that question right okay so i took care of that one that's great i knew i could get through three groups in the morning all i have to do is use astral i cheat a little bit great story great she's a true addict see she's the proof the medic method works thank you who's next two years ago i left a relationship that you might say you you performed the divorce here at llama and and i i left the relationship because the man who i was really loved very much was really a sexual addict and couldn't give up being with other women and um i went into my fear of being lonely and alone and have really gone through a tremendous transformation and during that time in the last two years um my life has become very full and i feel very connected to god especially through nature i have a lot of heart connections in my life but the heart connection i'm yearning for has not manifested and i have suddenly in the last few weeks come face to face with what i'm seeing is my own addiction which is um to connect in a loving way with a man and how i act that out sexually and i i don't know there's a question in here but it's really it's more of a very painful dilemma in which um i don't know what to do with the fire and um i i hear okay i'm sure you're not alone in that predicament i feel alone in this no you're not believe me if you scratch the surface of many people you find the same situation there's two parts to the question is how do we understand intimacy and what do we do with our yearning for intimacy and the other is what do you do with the energy um intimacy between two human beings is has the potential of being one of the most um one of the most evolved ways of being coming into spirit and coming back home the intimacy that occurs when two people share awareness when they have transcended the boundaries of separateness for the moment whether it's through sexuality or through the quality of trust and love that develops until there is this awareness that they both feel that they are holding together their their present in and delighting in separateness and yet the experience of unity is a is a very um highly treasured quality in the human condition and it's um it is a path to god [Music] the what it is that's being yearned for is the feeling that is the product of the method that is what you're yearning for is that feeling of being peaceful being at home feeling warm feeling safe etc the method of getting there is the relationship with another person the relationship with another person isn't the end point it's the process to get to that state of ah yeah that you're not feeling so often the attachment to the method gets in the way of realizing the real thing about what the method was for which is to feel that feeling of peace in one's being and and at homelessness and safety and softness and openness now the um the the kind of elaborate the when you start to work with sexual energy in relationship the the delicate line between um where the sex is in the service of the love or the sexes in the service of the increasing the oneness when it goes over the line into the greed for gratification or what's called lust which is my need to use you to satisfy me in which the person becomes an object which takes you away from the place ultimately that you want to be although see this is a can you hear the complexity of it i mean i'm playing with the edge of something because what happens is you're using when you use lust to get to god i mean sexual lust with another person to get to god you're using a method which separates you in order for the moment of transcendence when you transcend the separateness but because of how you got to there the minute the orgasm occurs you're back in your separateness again and you're back in a cruel way in an interesting way i mean there is a cruelty to lust as many of you recognize i think as opposed to sex that comes out of a quality of deep attunement and oneness with another human being um and just why your last relationship came unglued which is because you you you couldn't transcend the objectness that sex gave rise to the feeling of in a way that your partner was more attached to that gratification to the well let's strike this for a moment let's not go in that direction see the the harsh answer a harsh spiritual answer which we in the west don't really aren't able to handle because of our myths and our models and the way we deal with personality is ramana maharshi's line about about sexuality between people he says what is it when two bodies rub together what is it and from that point of view people only come together to procreate that's it it's the only reason from an evolved sexuality and what's interesting is you get to the point with another human being where you are so intimately with them in oneness that to come down into a practice to come to oneness takes you away from where you already are it's interesting to be in love with somebody so much that the sexuality can be a play that comes out of that oneness but no longer since it's previously been used as a method to get you to the oneness it's like if you're in detroit you don't have to take a bus to detroit put crudely that once the method that once you understand where you're going with another human being where you're going into the space of oneness you realize that sex the foreplay and sexuality is a method it is a method to bring you into unity into union and it's an exquisitely beautiful method and obviously it's a profound method because it keeps the species going but we have overlaid it with a tremendous psychodynamic tremendously complex set of rules and needs and gratifications and theory and myth and so on so that most of the time people are having sex in their heads i mean they are really making love with their own fantasy life which is part of the horror of lust so i mean i've never known how to quite say it i've said make love only with your friends that's one of the ways i started to say it of get to know somebody and open to them through truth and trust and hold back on the sexuality to the point where it's irrelevant then you can then you can have a ball but when you need it you've got to watch out that it doesn't come back and hit you in the head that's what i mean when i say crudely screw your friends you know i mean in gross terms right now see after living with somebody where i was absolutely delighted and thrilled and loved the intimacy of it and fed on it and it was a deep feeding for me i also saw that that wasn't the path that was suitable for me at this moment and i saw why and i understood it and i can't go in all the details but i understood that and you can raise questions about it but from my point of view it was clear and i am now living alone and when i live alone there is the there is loneliness that arises and that when you go to bed it would be nice to have somebody's warm feet to snuggle with and so on and all that sort of thing and i i i miss it but that's okay that's okay because there is um there is a way in which the complexity of that dance mask the deeper truth of it i would suggest i mean i guess i'm tough in this i would suggest that you allow yourself the grieving and allow yourself the sadness and allow yourself the loss and allow yourself that i don't have what i want and grieve and cry and do what you need to do until you can say okay and here i am until you can find the place in yourself that can be at peace without having what you want then you are in the optimum position to get what you want because until then your need for it is creating something in everybody you meet that is reducing the potential of that relationship to be meeting a true being of spirit in the right place can you hear what i'm playing with it's it's the statement in spirituality again and again give up what you want and you will get it but you can't say okay i gave it up now i want it because it's not clean enough it really is a giving up and it's a giving up into depth and friendship and you go through a grief you go through a loss the grief i'm not going to get what i want and i'm going to be lonely and it's going to hurt and here i am i mean it's people that die before when they die young or people that are sick or people that are anything or people whose child dies there is a grieving process or when you lose a job or you lose a dream there is a grieving process we'll deal with that in illness group sorry oh cheat okay [Music] sorry i took so much time with that one because that's a one that's relevant to a lot of us this podcast is brought to you by the love serve remember foundation and ramdas.org we appreciate you listening and we appreciate all the support that you've given us please continue that support and donate at ramadas.org we can then continue to share what ramdas has been sharing for all of these years thank you

Channel: Be Here Now Network

Views: 11,592

Rating: 4.9178886 out of 5

Keywords: francesca maxime, podcast, buddhist wisdom, wise girl, buddhism, buddhist, rerooted, rerooted podcast

Id: SVIfcDC46yU

Length: 58min 13sec (3493 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 17 2021