Ram Dass said...part two

We are on an inevitable course of awakening. If you understand that message deeply, it allows you to enter into your spiritual practices from a different perspective, one of patience and timelessness. You do your practices not out of a sense of duty or because you think you should, but because you know in your soul there really is nothing else you would rather do.

In Sanskrit this is called vairagya, a state of weariness with worldly desire where only the desire for spiritual fulfillment is left. The spiritual pull is the last desire, one that really grabs you, but that dissolves on its own because you dissolve in the process. The Tao says, “In the end you will be like the valley which is the favorite resort of the Way.” You become receptive, become soft, become open, become attuned, become quiet. You become the ocean of love.

The soul is made of love, and must ever strive to return to love. It can never find rest nor happiness in other things. It must lose itself in love. – Mechthild of Magdeburg

Spirit Helpers, painting by Susan Seddon Boulet

- Ram Dass, excerpt from his book Polishing the Mirror: How to Live from Your Spiritual Heart, published 2013.