Take My Reincarnation...Please

If I am reincarnated, I just hope it's not in another one of these silly bodies, stuck in time, confused about LSD, wanting to hide from my know-it-all guru, in desperate need of a restroom.

Ram Dass is a trip - 300 + of them to be inexact. I have to laugh when I hear people like Michael Savage, who is another trip, reviling the culture of the 1960s (all of it) and blaming all of our current problems on a bunch of diaper-doper communists from Brooklyn. While I agree with him about the diaper-doper communists from Brooklyn, I think he should read this book because we are currently banging our heads against a wailing wall of ignorance. The only really intelligent spiritual literature in the last 50 years was written when the pinko flag was apparently being unfurled behind closed doors, amidst some heated argument, in a cloud of garlic.

Fortunately at the time, Ram Dass was in India or Kansas. He was really trying to find himself and you should watch what you pray for, as his swami could have already told you. There's a lot to ponder and Ram Dass does a lot of pondering. I love the metaphor he uses where he sees himself as one who is being led somewhere, like a trout that thinks it is zigging and zagging in a state of free will, but, in fact, is being slowly reeled in by its guru. He also tells his audience that, though he is in a 41 year-old body, HE is not 41 years old. We are reminded that the body is like a car that is taking us somewhere. The car will fall apart at some point or get in a nasty accident - either way it's headed for the junk yard, but the driver is outside of time and WILL LIVE TO DRIVE AGAIN!!! Ram Dass' thinking is expansive, not expensive, like the knucklehead sit com we're currently stuck watching.

The problem is that enlightenment cannot be mastered by spiritual wannabies, so I guess we're just screwed. Reading "Be Here Now" first might help but, if that were the case, then he would have named it "Be Here First." I have an old edition of this book with a wonderful picture of a dancing siva from some museum way out there in Topeka, KS.

I close his books remembering that I am being observed by some ONE who knows of my every fart before I fart it. Not too cool, but I guess I'll just have to live with the knowledge. At least I can peer out of my window and observe my dogs without them knowing it. And they look as mindless to me as I must look to the ONE.



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Hip and Full of Cosmic Insights

"I can only believe in a God that dances..."
-Friedrich Nietzsche

I love Ram Dass. For those of you who are in the "dark" about him, he is formerly known as Richard Alpert...no relation to Herb. He and fellow psychoanalyst, Timothy Leary (anyone ever hear of him) promoted LSD as the way to change EVERYTHING in your life. From curing alcoholism to feeling as though there is a deeper side to everything that we see, LSD was the "wonder drug" that made it all possible. Instead of going fullbore into the trip that made Leary so famous, Alpert went to India seeking Spirituality and came back as Ram Dass. You see, when the consciousness changes, the name changes, as well. Our name must reflect our inner nature. In some circles I am known as Mi Che Lob...which simply means, I like Michelob beer...

This book is a written account of Dass' visits to various institutions. He was trying to get "prisoners" to see that there is way out of the game they were currently in. Whether we're in a brick and iron facility or in a prison of our own making makes little difference to Ram Dass, we can be free from those prisons when we begin to identify ourselves not with a body, but with the Spirit of all Creation...with God...y'see, Christianity does not own God. They would like to think that they do, but God does not promote only one type of religion, God does not only allow "certain" people to experience bliss and peace, God does not vote Republican. God is the Impersonal made personal; a Love that knows no bounds that is within and around each being. Everything is God and God is everything.

This is the book that got me to start chanting OM MANI PADME AUM every morning and every evening and got me strange looks from my dad. It helped me to clarify what I really wanted from my life and it made me realize with real eyes all I really want is God. I may say I want riches, or power, or money, or sex, or Michelob beer, but what I really want is a feeling that none of these things can ever provide for in the long haul...only in seeking the Eternal can I find true peace and bliss. This is not to say that a million dollars, a prestigious career, a fabulous sex life with my soul mate, and good food and drink cannot provide happiness, they most certainly can...and do! But one must always remember that in back of all form is No Form. You see, people in the west tend to think that one can either "have" God or riches. We don't understand that when we have God in our hearts, we are in the lap of riches. That is why the Master Jesus said, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God within you...and all things will be added..."

Heaven is a consciousness, an awareness, a feeling of being full already. Maybe this is why we are such an addicted bunch of people. We keep reaching for things that never really fill us up because we are reaching for things that cannot outlast themselves, but when we reach for that which has no beginning and no ending, we reach for the only thing that is ever really real; God. You are God. I am God. We are God. These skin encapsulated egos, these bodies, these fragile shells are not the end all, be all of life. I will shed this "clothing" one day and evolve into something even greater.

I betcha some "born againer" is reading this review saying, "Yeah, but first you're gonna fry for believing in something other than Jesus Christ." Oh, I believe in him...I really do...I just don't believe in the perverted and twisted teachings that others have made about him. Salvation is a guarantee. If God threw us in hell, God would be right there with us. God loves Its creation; that is why we are who we are so we may one day discover that behind all these weird beliefs, behind all these carefully engineered personalities and ideas we have about the world and about life, is the One Light that can never fade or die. We are Eternal now and forever. This is the Only Dance there is...God dancing with Itself in everything, as everything...

I believe in a dancing God.

May You come to dance with Spirit...to waltz with your own faults...to be the beautiful You you already are.

Peace and Blessings...

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The only dance there is.

The Truth always is the same. It's just good to remind ourselves occasionally of its nature.

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