Sunday, February 25, 2024

Rediscover a free Ram Dass Meditation Library, read a personal retreat story from a community member... 💜

 


A (slightly blurry) photo of Lindsay and Ram Dass having a Dinnertime Darshan
Join us this summer for our third Summer Mountain Retreat in Boone, NC!

Supporting Your Practice

Revisit our Free Ram Dass Mantra and Meditation Library

With over 35 audio mantras, meditations and resources from Ram Dass (with transcripts), the Guided Meditation Library on RamDass.org is a wonderful all-in-one resource to rekindle your practice, or add some Loving Awareness into your day-to-day life.

A Few of Our Favorites:
+ Soma Meditation - Toggling between the form and the formless, the One and the many.
+ The Heart Cave - Ram Dass guides you straight into your heart cave – it is a place beyond all forms and limits, a place for letting go
+ Aditya Hridayam Mantra - Loosely translated, it means, ‘As for the being who keeps the sun in the heart, all evil vanishes for life.’

"Meditation provides a deeper appreciation of the interrelatedness of all things and the part each person plays. The simple rules of this game are honesty with yourself about where you are in your life and learning to listen to hear how it is. Meditation is a way of listening more deeply, so you hear from a deeper space, exactly how it is. Meditation will help you quiet your mind, enhance your ability to be insightful and understanding and give you a sense of inner peace.

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."
- Ram Dass


>> Meditate and Chant with Ram Dass

This Week's Podcast Episodes

From our sister site, Be Here Now Network






When you support the Love Serve Remember Foundation, you help ensure that the teachings of Ram Dass & Neem Karoli Baba and our family of wisdom teachers will be available to generations to come.
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Whisper in the Heart recounts the stories of over 150 people and the ways in which they “met” Maharaji...
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This week, rediscover our free Ram Dass virtual mantra and meditation library, Ram Dass explores 'embracing it all',hear from a satsang member about her retreat experience, and listen to this week's newest podcasts from Be Here Now Network.


Be Here Now

Weekly Highlights & Events

🌼 Virtual Event on 2/26: BIPOC Satsang Reschedule: Mercy in a Seemingly Merciless World
🩵 Virtual Event on 2/27: General Satsang: Ram Dass Here & Now Podcast Discussion
🧘🏻 Supporting Your Practice Rediscover the Ram Dass Mantra & Meditation Library
📖 Webstore Feature: Re-read Whisper in the Heart - The Ongoing Presence of Neem Karoli Baba

Weekly Wisdom

Ram Dass on Embracing it All

...It's interesting that as long as you identify with your personality, the things that get you uptight are your enemies. The minute you identify with your awareness, the things that get you uptight show you where your awareness still has sticky fingers. Most of us with a mind, because the mind deals with polarities, feel that if you're happy, you're not sad, and you want to be happy. So you push away that which makes you sad.

But if you are going to be free, there's nothing you can turn away from or turn off. Like if you live fully in this moment, does this moment include that baby that's taking its last breath from starvation? Yeah. So are you sad? Yes. Does it include the baby taking its first breath as it comes out of its mother’s womb, and the joy of the beginning? Yes. So you're happy. If you are the fullness of the moment, all of it, these are all your voices. If you and I are to be free, there is nothing we can push away...

Community Spotlight

Our Community Member Lindsay Bond Shares a Story of Her First Ram Dass Retreat Experience

Share your own story about your experience in this community, we'd love to hear from you!
In the Fall of 2019, two weeks before the start of my yoga teacher training, I was contacted by Love Serve Remember Foundation, asking if I would like to attend a retreat in Maui in December of that year. It had slipped my mind that in April, I had emailed the Director of LSRF, Raghu Markus, expressing that I would be interested in a retreat scholarship. There was a wonderful synchronicity to the contact the foundation made; I had attended the Los Angeles screening of the film Becoming Nobody the previous evening.

What unfolded in December was one of the most meaningful experiences of my life so far – it had been a heart’s desire to meet Ram Dass in the body while I still could. I took part in the five-day retreat, taking in lectures from many wonderful wisdom teachers and meeting many like-hearted souls and my teacher two weeks before his passing. (I am still delighted that my meeting of Ram Dass took place the first night at dinner by the buffet table! As RD would say, “Yum, Yum, Yum…”)

While at the retreat, I asked Krishna Das in session about ways I could continue to hold space for my brother, Kyle, who suffers from schizophrenia and struggles continually with homelessness. “As a sibling, there’s a very deep connection between you,” KD related. “So whatever you do do, with him in mind, is very powerful… Hold him in your heart, pray for him, talk to him…There’s a knot between beings, a karmic knot. So if from inside of that, if you can help unravel that knot, that’s a good thing for you both.” The truth in these words was a salve for my heart. Chanting has continued to be an anchor practice, creating space for the grace and courage to hold Kyle in loving presence.

Following the retreat, I continue to learn that through personal yoga practice, not just “on the mat” but through devotional music, meditation, and other modalities, our dedications for others can traverse energetic borders. The power of simple, sincere kindness has shifted my perspective and deepened my understanding of relationships, not just with my partner or friends, but with strangers and even the most challenging relationships. I’ve experienced that kindness extended to one, benefits us all as the One.

Life has become richer and more beautiful as a result of my connection to Ram Dass and satsang. The time I spent at 2019’s Open Your Heart in Paradise retreat was a period of deepening I will continue to treasure, learn from, and appreciate...

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