.....My dharma is to do this. I am doing it. I am at peace with the universe. It is what it is. It includes horror and beauty and it is all unfolding and I am part of it. I am part of it, like the winds, the mountains and the rivers. I am a part of it. And I am at peace.
And the actions, and every action that catches you is another action to awaken and see how it caught you and to bring you back into a center. Then you are a karma yogi. Then you a karma yogi. And when a karma yogi, a real yogi, meets another yogi it is only itself meeting itself through all the different forms of the dance, of the dialogue between two parts of itself...
Ram Dass
I think part of my journey is to be perpetually confused! lol. After what I wrote yesterday about there possibly being something wrong , not with the lack of readership, but my 'desire' for more 'knowledge' and readership because part of me is longing to be recognized as someone that knows...I once again came across the video on Karma I listened to and wrote about a few entries ago. It added another perspective to the mix of musings and questions circling in this much too busy mind of mine.
I realize...that first of all...I need to, once again, put effort into removing those words, those judgements of "Good and bad, right and wrong, should be and shouldn't be" from my vocabulary and thereby from my mind. There is no right or wrong about what I am doing. It is all just as it is and I am exactly where I am supposed to be at this part of the journey. All the "studying" I did helped to bring me to this point, as did all the 'living', the falling, the failing, the losing, the making so called mistakes. My big fat ego that wants so badly to redeem itself and be recognized also helped to bring me to this point of where I am. Where am I right now? I am exactly where I am supposed to be. I know that the end of suffering for me and others will only come when we wake up to who we really are and we can only wake ourselves up. So I am committed to waking up myself and sharing this journey so others may be inspired to wake themselves up too.. That is how this blog began. I am not yet awake. I am still in the so called early stages, very much grasping and clinging ...looking for things out there to make me feel okay in here. The beautiful thing about this is that I realize that. I realize it enough to share it. It helps me to awaken and that in turn has the potential to help others.
Can't wait until you are enlightened to help another person...bring whatever truth you got to bear into the situation. Each act you do to help another person is simultaneously the act you do to help yourself.
From Jhana...
As a Jhana Yogi, I learn so I can teach and I teach so I can learn.
Ram Dass mentions that once we get to a certain point of our evolving we will feel compelled by something greater than 'little me' to keep going, to practice a certain way, even if 'little me' is still very much around. I am literally compelled to study everything that comes my way in the form of scriptures, reading, lectures, teachings. I am "pitting the mind against the mind". So I study. Jhana yoga is a part of my path right now, my dharma. Ego may be attempting to use this for its own benefit but I can "see" that...so I can bring myself back to the pureness of my dharma.
...To Karma Yoga
I am also compelled as you can see by the frequent sharing of what I am learning from my own mind to follow the path of the Karma Yogi. Karma Yoga, according to Dass, is that yoga that works with the stuff of your life. Karma is all about cause and effect so it is using every action as a way to wake up. It is not so much about what we do but how we do it.
Ram Dass offers four components or ways to help us use Krama yoga to fulfill our Dharma:
- Firstly, we must quiet down, become still so we can listen to that inner wisdom helps us hear what our dharma is. What are your skills, interests, opportunities, present day circumstances, education etc and how will these things help you best serve? We do not need to manipulate the world to suit our dharma...we use what is offered us, what we got, so to speak in the present moment. Our dharma will fluctuate and change from moment to moment so we need to keep listening. Right now...I am not working "out there"...I have time and an opportunity to write and study. I have that compelling interest. I have this blog and a few readers, at least, whom I am very grateful for. I have years of education and past experience as an educator so it makes sense that I would at least share what I learned, don't you think? So when I am most still and quiet...in those early hours I awaken I sit and I listen to my dharma...feeling the pull to study and come here with what I have learned. That may change tomorrow and I may be called to serve "out there". Who knows?
- Secondly, we need to loosen our identity with being the one doing the action. We really don't do anything, we are done. We need to get that. I don't do the learning, the learning comes to me and through me. I don't do the writing...it too comes through me. Lao Tzu said, When nothing is done, nothing is left undone. We just flow with Life. We don't make things happen nor are things really happening. It is just getting done. We just need to rest in spacious awareness of all that is getting done around us. The Karma yogi is using the act to come back to the space behind the act. They are seeing beyond the veil.
- Need to detach from outcome. We just do the action as best we can ( knowing that it is simply just being done through us) without getting too hung up on the goal. What will happen will happen. Though I occasionally slip and become disappointed or worried about the number of readers I have ...for the most part I let go of all that. I bring myself back to spaciousness and just do what dharma tells me to do....leaving the rest up to Life. The process of Life becomes the focus rather than the product. I still slip many times and get all tangled up in the idea of Life as a product rather than a process but I am committed to keep bringing myself back to that spacious center, to who I really am. Back to awareness. What is free is awareness. You are free. Who you think you are isn't.
- Then there is the devotional component in Karma Yoga. Who is it that you are relating to in your act of service...through your dharma? We need to see the being, not that which we want them to be in order to best serve our egos. There is a being beyond the idea of that person and the being in me will see it if I get beyond my own image of self. I do not want to use that being to enhance my ego. So sometimes I , as the ego, see the being or potential being who may stumble upon this page as a "reader" who enhances the numbers on my stats page and therefore enhances my ego...I do. I diminish who they are. But most times I, the being, see or at least strive to see the "being" reading what I have written so we can connect for I know that my experience of Life is not "individual" or "unique.
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